Support Guide
Product specialization guidelines
Updated: February 10, 2026
Specialization Eligibility
In order to pursue specialization, partners must ensure the following requirements are met before submitting the application:
- Be an active member of the Adobe Digital Experience Partner Program at the Silver, Gold or Platinum membership tiers
- Any individual employees whose certification will be used toward specialization requirements must be a registered user of the Adobe Partner Experience Hub.
- The primary contact submitting the specialization request must also be a registered user of the Adobe Partner Experience Hub.
Geographic rules
Each product specialization is earned at a regional level aligned to the following regions:
- Americas, including North America, Latin America, and South America (AMER)
- Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
- Asia Pacific (APAC)
- Japan
Regional specialization
To earn specialization in one of the regions defined above, a partner must meet all the requirements in that geography (with the exception of the loaning policy described below).
Regional recognition. Once a regional specialization has been attained, partners will receive recognition in the form of badging and stripes.
Global Specialization
Global specialization status is assigned once the partner has attained specialization for a single product in at least three of the four regions defined above (AMER, EMEA, APAC, and Japan).
Once this criteria has been met, the partner will become a Global Specialized partner and will receive new recognition badging and stripes indicating the partner has certified capacity in three or more Adobe regions and can deliver their solution worldwide.
Applying certifications to specialization requirements
To count towards specialization requirements, certifications must:
- be documented as Active in Adobe records, and
- valid for at least 90 days from the specialization request date
Any certification that is expired or nearing expiration can be renewed by having the employee take and pass the latest version of the applicable Adobe certification exam. Note that we now offer a fast track option to go directly to the certification exam. Both new and renewed certifications and accreditations are considered Active.
Certification status can be reviewed by partner administrators through the company profile.
Proof of certification
Digital proof of product certification is required. These documents are provided directly to your employees when they pass any certification exam. All certifications must be active and not expiring within 90 days of submitting your specialization application. Partner administrators can view active certifications for all employees, as well as upcoming expiration dates, through the Credentials tab under Track Partnership section of Manage Profile.
Using multiple certifications held by a single individual
A single individual can fulfill multiple roles per specialization request. For example, one person who holds certifications for both the architect and developer roles can represent both rules in a single specialization request.
Certifications held by contract employees
Any certified individual presented as a resource that qualifies an organization for specialization is assumed and expected to be continuously available to that organization and aligned with the extended resources of that organization. This includes the use of contract employees used for earning specialization.
Certifications held by offshore resources (Loaning policy)
Adobe understands that many of our partners have offshore development centers and that the resources in these centers implement projects all over the world.
Because of the prevalent use of offshore resources, we allow partners to count (“loan”) offshore resources toward regional specialization in another geographic area.
An individual can only be loaned once. If an individual has been loaned to another region, that person can’t be loaned again to any other geography for the term of the specialization, including within the individual’s home region.
Changes to a loaned individual’s status; If a loaned individual becomes unavailable (leaves the partner’s company, for example), the partner must submit a ticket to the Adobe Partner Help team within 90 days and provide the name of a replacement individual to maintain the specialization requirements. For additional information on maintaining specialization requirements, go here.
Applying customer engagements to specialization requirements
Submitting customer references
This information is submitted via the Specialization approval request form and should include company name, company contact name, contact email, phone number, and project details.
New specialization requests
For new product specializations, the partner applicant must submit references from three (3) companies that meet the following criteria:
- Partner applicant
- led an Adobe project through the entire development cycle for the specific product under consideration, or
- has a run and operate engagement for the product
- Projects must be located within the same region in which Specialization is being pursued
- Partner applicant must have been active on the project within the last 12 months.
Specialization renewals
For the renewal of an existing product specialization, the partner must submit references from two (2) companies. Companies used as references previously can be reused as long as the project has been worked on in the past 12 months.
How Adobe engages the reference
Adobe will email a short survey to request feedback on partner performance for the specified project. The survey asks:
- Customer details (contact name and job title)
- Contact’s involvement in the specified project (pick-list)
- Confirm Adobe products used and scope of the project (pick-list)
- Top three (3) reasons for choosing to work with the partner (pick-list ranking)
- Overall, how satisfied are you with the performance & service provided by undefined? (1-10 rating)
- How likely are you to recommend them to others looking to implement similar projects? (1-10 rating)
- May we associate your name and/or company with your responses to this survey to share with Adobe? (Yes/no)
To qualify for the specialization requirement, the reference’s responses to questions about partner performance must be high.
Eligibility exclusions
Ineligible references include engagements in which the partner subcontracted with Adobe Consulting Services, or any other partner or service provider, to develop aspects of the project. Additionally, Adobe or other Adobe partners cannot be used as a customer reference.
Maintaining specialization requirements
All specialization requirements must be maintained between renewals to keep the specialization active, which in turn determines the partner’s eligibility to display specialization badging. Each earned specialization is valid for two years from the approval date.
View and monitor earned specializations
Partner administrators can view all specializations and associated expiration dates under the track partnership section of the Partner Experience Hub.
Early renewals
Starting 90 days prior to the specialization’s expiration date, partners can use the same request form to renew the specialization. If the renewal request is not submitted before the expiration date, the specialization will expire.
If a partner renews the specialization before the original expiration date, the renewal expiration date will still be calculated as two years after the original expiration date. In other words, there is no penalty to the timing of the original expiration date when renewing early.
Lapsed or non-compliant specializations
A specialization is considered lapsed when the partner fails to maintain the minimum requirements for a given specialization. For example, a common non-compliance event is the departure of an employee whose certification was used to achieve specialization.
Once an event occurs that creates a non-compliance issue, the partner has 90 days from the date of the event to correct requirements without any change in its status. If the issue is not addressed within 90 days, that specialization will be considered non-compliant and any related benefits granted by Adobe’s Digital Experience Partner Program will be revoked.
Contact our support team for the notification of non-compliance as soon as possible after the non-compliance event occurs.
Expired specializations
A specialization is considered expired if it is not renewed prior to the expiration date.
Rules for holding companies, subsidiaries, and sister companies
As partners deepen their engagement with Adobe, we often encounter complex organizational structures between holding (parent) companies, subsidiaries, and sibling companies. For these interconnected entities, we’ve defined the following guidelines:
- Both parent companies and their children can achieve regional and global specializations independently.
- A parent company is allowed to count a child company employee’s certification toward specialization requirements, but the certification can only be used once by a single entity. To further clarify, if a child’s certification is used by the parent company, the child can’t pursue specialization using that same certification.
- Similarly, deployments attained by child companies can be used by the parent entity for specialization, but the deployment can only be counted once.
- When certifications or deployments from a parent and child entity are used to achieve specialization, the partner needs to select which entity will hold the specialization. It cannot be held simultaneously by both the parent and child entities and will only be listed under one Partner Directory profile.
- By default, the partner company that submits the specialization request will have the stripe reflected on their Partner Directory profile.
- To attach a specialization at the child/subsidiary level, the requirements must be satisfied by the child/subsidiary.
- Specialization stripes will only appear in the Partner Directory profile (under the Expertise tab) if at least one certification is linked to the partner’s account in that region. This can be a concern when a regional certification is achieved using the loaning policy to satisfy requirements.
- There is no inheritance of specialization across parent, child, and sibling entities.