Last week VMware Education announced a change in naming the various certifications, where the year in which the certification is achieved is reflected in the name of the certification.
Until now the name of the certification reflected the version of the product that it was related to (for example VCP6-DCV referred to the vSphere 6.0 release). This may cause confusion about the currency of a specific certification, since the pace where product releases are made available is not very strict, which is also reflected in the certification (-exams). For example my VCP4-DCV certification was 15 months older than my VCP5-DCV certification, but the latter was over 3 years older than my VCP6-DCV certification.
Also both my “DCV” and “DTM” certifications are valid but one is called VCP6 and the other is called VCP7 (as they relate to vSphere 6.0 and Horizon 7.0 respectively).
So changing the name to reflect the year where the certification was achieved does make sense and will result in certifications like VCP-DTM 2019 and VCAP-DCV Deploy 2020.
It is important to understand that the change is only with regard to the naming of the certification. This means that there are no changes in requirements to achieve a certification or for re-certification (so a certification is still valid for 2 years and can be renewed by taking a newer exam in the same track or taking an exam in a different track). Also the name of the certification exam wil still reflect the product version that the exam questions are based on.
More detailed information about this announcement can be found in the FAQ document on the VMware certification website.