The Pre-Departure Course certificate, and what verification means from 1 March 2026

What you receive when you pass

Completing both parts of the course — the two online modules and the live interview — produces a digital certificate. Official sources describe it as issued electronically rather than as a printed document, and as having “no expiry” once the full process is complete, according to the official FAQ.

That certificate is the document Identità describes as a required part of a first-time Single Permit application — see how the certificate fits into your Single Permit application for more on that relationship.

A naming inconsistency worth knowing about

Two official Skills Pass sources name the certificate-issuing system differently:

• One Skills Pass page describes certificates as managed “through Hyland, the official document and credential management system”.
• The official FAQ instead says certificates “are issued digitally weekly through Blockcerts”.

We re-checked both pages on 2026-06-14 and the naming mismatch remains. The separate Tourism & Hospitality certification page also describes Blockcerts in detail, so the strongest current evidence points to Blockcerts for the certificate wallet/verification flow. Still, because official sources disagree, this guide states both official names rather than declaring the Hyland wording obsolete without an official correction. In practice, the name of the issuing platform shouldn’t matter for your application — what matters is that you receive a verifiable certificate and that it’s accepted when you submit it.

What changes on 1 March 2026

Identità has published an operational notice stating that, from 1 March 2026, it will begin formally verifying Pre-Departure Course certificates as part of the work-permit application process. Before that date, the certificate is described as a requirement to hold; from that date, Identità describes actively checking it as part of processing your application.

The practical takeaway from the official notice is straightforward: applicants and employers are encouraged to gather all required documentation — including the certificate — well before submitting, specifically to avoid the kind of processing delay that comes from a verification step finding something missing or inconsistent at the last minute.

If your planned application date is on or close to 1 March 2026, treat completing the course early as a way to remove a variable from your timeline, not as something you can leave until the last minute.

If something looks wrong with your certificate

Official materials describe the issuance process but don’t publish a dedicated troubleshooting page for certificate problems (a missing certificate, a name mismatch, a delay beyond the normal weekly cycle). If you encounter any of these, the right channel is Skills Pass support directly — not a guess, and not a third-party fix. Persistent issues that affect your Single Permit timeline are also worth flagging to Identità, since they are the body that will ultimately verify the certificate.

Now what? Submitting the certificate

Once you hold the certificate, the next step is to submit it as part of your Single Permit application on the Identità portal. The certificate is one of the required documents Identità lists for the Single Permit process — so it doesn’t replace the application, it supports it.

In practice this means: once you have the certificate in your account, you download or export it, then upload it to your Single Permit application alongside your other required documents. From 1 March 2026, Identità has stated that it will actively verify the certificate as part of processing — so having it ready before you submit, rather than gathering it afterwards, avoids a potential delay.

See how the Pre-Departure Course fits into your Single Permit application for a fuller picture of where the certificate sits in the wider process and what the published rollout timeline looks like.