Registered Nurse (RN) License Renewal in Virginia

Virginia doesn’t ask you to complete continuing education. It asks you to stay competent, and then hands you nine different ways to prove it. The Board calls it continued competency, and the “30 hours” that CE sellers quote is only one of the nine. For a lot of Virginia nurses, it’s not the box they’ll check.

The nine ways to meet continued competency

To renew an active license, you complete at least one of these within the renewal cycle:

• Current specialty certification by a national certifying organization. If you hold and maintain a national certification in your specialty, that satisfies continued competency on its own, with zero contact hours.
• Thirty contact hours of workshops, seminars, conferences, or courses relevant to nursing practice. The straightforward path, and the one CE vendors sell.
• Fifteen contact hours plus 640 hours of active practice as a nurse during the cycle. The working-nurse path.
• At least three credit hours of post-licensure academic education relevant to nursing from an accredited college or university.
• A board-approved refresher course in nursing.
• A nursing-related evidence-based practice project or research study.
• Publication as author or co-author of a nursing-related work during the renewal cycle.
• Teaching or developing a nursing course yielding at least three semester hours of college credit, a 15-week course, or specialty certification.
• Teaching or developing continuing education courses for up to 30 contact hours.

The practical read is the same as in North Carolina, the other big option-based state: if you’re nationally certified, you’re likely already done. If you’re not, the 30-hour path or the 15-hours-plus-640-practice path fit most working nurses. Pick the option that matches what you already do rather than assuming you owe a flat 30 hours.

Your first renewal after initial licensure by exam or endorsement is exempt from continued competency entirely. And if you’re genuinely stuck, the Board can grant a good-cause extension of up to one year, but only if you ask in writing at least 60 days before your renewal date, so it’s a planned safety valve, not a last-minute rescue.

You attest, and you keep the proof

Virginia renews on a two-year cycle, and like most states it takes your attestation at renewal rather than your certificates. You certify that you met one of the nine options, renew, and hold your documentation in case the Board audits you afterward. Keep proof of whichever option you used, national certification card, transcript, CE certificates, practice verification, because the audit lands after the fact and the burden of proof is yours.

The fee

Renewal is $140, set in the Board’s fee schedule at 18VAC90-19-30, with a $50 late fee on top if you miss the deadline. That $140 is on the higher side nationally, above North Carolina’s $100 and well above Texas’s $68, though the flexibility of the nine-option rule is part of what you’re paying into, there’s real room to satisfy it without buying a single CE course.

Virginia is a compact state

Virginia implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact on January 19, 2018, in the original wave alongside North Carolina. If Virginia is your primary state of residence, your RN license can be a multistate license, letting you practice across the other compact states without a separate application in each. That matters in the D.C. metro, where a Virginia nurse with a multistate license reaches far more of the region than one tied to a single state. The privilege follows your residence, so it holds as long as Virginia stays your legal home. Use the compact checker below to see which states a Virginia license reaches.