How to renew your Georgia RN license

Eligibility to renew: you must hold an active Georgia RN license, have met one of the five competency options during the current biennium, and have no unresolved disciplinary matter that would bar renewal. If you answer Yes to any character question in GOALS, the application moves to manual review rather than being auto-denied.

Pick ONE of five competency options — Georgia's flexibility is the story, and it's worth understanding all five before defaulting to CE hours:

1. 30 CE contact hours from a board-approved provider (employer-sponsored CE capped at 50% unless separately accredited; courses under 30 minutes don't count).
2. Maintenance of a national certification (CCRN, CEN, OCN, CNOR, etc.) — ACLS, PALS, and TNCC explicitly do not count because they're considered work-required skills verification, not competency-building education.
3. 500 practice hours during the biennium, verified by a licensed facility on the employer form.
4. Accredited academic program in nursing or a related field (minimum 2 credit hours completed in the biennium).
5. Board-approved re-entry program, or graduation from a nursing program within the biennium.

Mandatory topics: none. Georgia prescribes no required subjects — unusual among large states, and a frequent point of confusion for nurses relocating from states like Florida or Texas that mandate specific topics such as domestic violence or human trafficking recognition. First-renewal exemption applies only if your initial license period was 6 months or less.

Documentation to keep for 4 years: CE certificates (each with provider name, course title, date, hours, and approval number), employer verification letter on facility letterhead for the practice-hours option, current certification card, official transcript for academic programs, or program completion letter for re-entry. Audits are random; digital copies stored in Trust satisfy retention.

Why the split cohort exists. Georgia staggers RN license expirations across even and odd years to spread renewal volume for the board and CE Broker rather than processing every licensee in the same 90-day window. If you moved to Georgia by endorsement, your cohort is typically assigned based on your initial licensure date, not your birth month — don't assume it mirrors another state's system you may have renewed under previously.

Character and discipline questions. GOALS asks about criminal history, other-state board actions, and impairment history at every renewal, not just initial licensure. A truthful Yes answer routes the file to a licensing analyst for review; it does not automatically deny renewal, and most reviews clear within a few weeks if supporting documentation is uploaded promptly.

Georgia's default competency path is 30 contact hours of continuing education from a board-approved provider during the two-year cycle. Georgia enforces the 50% employer-sponsored cap strictly during audits — if half or more of your submitted hours came from your own employer's in-house training and that program isn't separately accredited, those excess hours won't count, potentially dropping you below 30 hours even though CE Broker shows the total was met.

There is no subject-matter requirement — no mandated ethics, pharmacology, or opioid-specific hours, unlike neighboring states. Any board-approved topic relevant to nursing practice qualifies. Hours must be logged and, where the provider supports it, electronically reported through CE Broker before you attest to completion in GOALS.

No fee or deadline changes for this cycle. The $65 renewal fee, the $75 late fee, the $90 reinstatement fee, and the January 31 biennial deadline structure remain as published on the Georgia Board of Nursing's renewal page and the RN How-To Guide.

The main ongoing shift worth flagging is administrative: CE Broker has become the board's standard CE documentation tool for RNs choosing the CE-hours option, mirroring the system Florida already uses. Nurses who renewed before CE Broker was adopted should confirm their account is set up before their next window opens, since a missing or incomplete CE Broker profile is a common cause of audit delays.

If your initial Georgia RN license was issued for six months or less before your first renewal deadline, you are exempt from the competency requirement for that first renewal only — you still pay the standard $65 fee and still answer the character questions. Every subsequent renewal requires one of the five competency options in full.

If your initial license period ran longer than six months, there is no proration: you owe the full competency requirement (30 CE hours, 500 practice hours, etc.) just like every other renewal, even if you were only licensed for, say, fourteen months of the biennium. Confirm your license issue date in GOALS well before your first renewal window opens so you aren't caught assuming an exemption that doesn't apply.