Minnesota Continuing Education Requirements for Mental Health Professionals

Minnesota’s continuing education requirements share a common 40-hour baseline across LPCC, LICSW, LMFT, and psychology, but the boards administering them are entirely separate, and each has added its own layer of mandated content on top of that shared number. The most notable recent addition is cultural responsiveness training, now required across multiple professions — but not because of one unified rule.

The biggest thing to understand about Minnesota’s cultural competency mandates is that they arrived piecemeal, through separate legislative actions at different times for different professions. LMFTs got their 4-hour requirement through a 2021 statute amendment; counselors got theirs in 2023. If you hold licenses in more than one of these professions, a single course satisfying one board’s requirement won’t necessarily satisfy the other’s.

This guide explains the current Minnesota continuing education requirements for LPCCs, LICSWs, LMFTs, and psychologists, including required CE hours, ethics requirements, renewal deadlines, approved providers, and other Minnesota-specific rules to help you stay compliant.

Minnesota Continuing Education Requirements

Minnesota regulates counselors under one board and marriage and family therapists and social workers under their own separate boards, with a relatively new cultural responsiveness/competency mandate now appearing across multiple professions (Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy, n.d.; Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy, n.d.; Minnesota Board of Social Work, n.d.; Minnesota Board of Psychology, n.d.).

License Type	CE Requirements	Renewal / Special Requirements	Official Licensing Board
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 4 hours cultural responsiveness, required for renewals on or after July 1, 2023.	Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy
Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 2 hours ethics. As of August 1, 2020, LICSWs need an additional 12 hours in clinical content.	Minnesota Board of Social Work
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 3 hours ethics, 4 hours cultural competency (per a 2021 legislative amendment), 2 hours medical errors. Board-approved supervisors need an additional 4 hours in supervision.	Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy
Licensed Psychologist (PhD / PsyD)	40 CE hours every 2 years	All hours may be completed online if APA-approved.	Minnesota Board of Psychology

Clinical Note: Minnesota’s cultural competency requirements are worth tracking closely because they arrived through separate legislative actions at different times for different professions — counselors got their 4-hour mandate in 2023, LMFTs got theirs via a 2021 statute amendment. If you hold licenses in more than one of these professions, don’t assume a single cultural competency course automatically satisfies both boards’ requirements.

Minnesota License Renewal Requirements

Minnesota’s four boards each use their own renewal structure — one uses a single fixed statewide deadline, while the other three are individualized to your original license date.

LPCC License Renewal

Administered by the Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy. Per Minnesota Rules 2150.0050, the license term is one year, expiring on the last day of the month preceding the month in which the license was originally effective — an individualized rather than fixed date. The renewal fee is $250, with a $100-per-month late fee if you miss your deadline. A renewal notice is mailed 45 days before expiration, but not receiving it doesn’t excuse a late renewal.

LICSW License Renewal

Administered by the separate Minnesota Board of Social Work. Renewal is biennial, expiring on the last day of the licensee’s own birth month — another individualized date. Reported renewal fees vary somewhat by source (figures from $263.25 up to $385 have been cited), so confirm the current exact amount directly with the Board. Minnesota has endorsed the Social Work Licensure Compact, though as of this writing no temporary practice privileges are yet available under it since the compact isn’t fully operational nationally.

LMFT License Renewal

Administered by the separate Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy. Unlike the other three Minnesota boards, LMFT renewal runs on a single fixed statewide deadline: December 31 each year, with a $275 renewal fee. Licenses may still be renewed between January 1–31 with a $100 late fee; renewal is not permitted after January 31, at which point you’d need to contact the Board about reinstatement, which requires a new criminal background check that can take up to two weeks to process.

Psychologist License Renewal

Administered by the separate Minnesota Board of Psychology. Per Minnesota Rules 7200.3200, the license is valid for a two-year period ending on the last day of the month in which it was originally granted — individualized, like LPCC and LICSW. An expired license is administratively terminated unless renewed or voluntarily terminated by the licensee beforehand.

Minnesota Approved CE Providers

Whether you’re looking for Minnesota online continuing education or in-person Minnesota continuing education courses, Minnesota recognizes CE from national accreditors alongside genuinely active state associations:

Accreditor / Association	Who It’s For	Recognized For
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)	LPCCs	Widely accepted for LPCC renewal
Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB)	LICSWs	Accepted for LICSW renewal
APA-approved sponsors	Licensed Psychologists	The standard for psychologist CE in Minnesota; all hours may be online if APA-approved
Minnesota Counseling Association (MnCA)	LPCCs	State-level CEUs, legislative advocacy at the Capitol, and Ethics Forums specific to Minnesota counselors
Minnesota Psychological Association (MPA)	Licensed Psychologists	Directly APA-approved to sponsor psychologist CE, described by its own membership as the leading in-state outlet for maintaining CE credits with the Board of Psychology
NASW Minnesota Chapter	LICSWs	Nearly 2,000 members statewide, with an Annual Conference and Social Work Summit offering CE opportunities
Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (MAMFT)	LMFTs	State-level network and CE resource for Minnesota marriage and family therapists

For a broader look at how CE approval works across all license types and states, see our full guide to continuing education for mental health professionals.

Minnesota-Specific Considerations

A few details worth knowing beyond the base CE requirements:

Cultural Competency Mandates Arrived Separately, Not Together

It’s worth repeating from the Clinical Note because it’s genuinely easy to get wrong: LMFTs have needed 4 hours of cultural competency since a 2021 legislative amendment, while LPCCs only picked up their 4-hour cultural responsiveness requirement for renewals on or after July 1, 2023. A dual-licensed clinician assuming these requirements are identical, or that they started at the same time, would be wrong on both counts.

Minnesota’s Renewal Structure Is a Genuine Mix of Fixed and Individualized Dates

LMFT is the outlier here with a single fixed December 31 statewide deadline, while LPCC, LICSW, and psychology are all individualized based on original licensure date. A clinician holding an LMFT alongside any of the other three licenses is tracking a fundamentally different kind of deadline for each.

Minnesota Has Endorsed the Social Work Licensure Compact

Minnesota social workers should know the state has endorsed the Social Work Licensure Compact, but as of this writing, no temporary practice privileges are yet available under it, since the compact hasn’t reached full operational status nationally. This is worth checking periodically rather than assuming endorsement alone means privileges are usable today.

New Licensee vs. Renewing Licensee

A few distinctions worth knowing depending on where you are in your Minnesota licensure timeline:

• New LICSWs and other social work licensees have their CE hours prorated based on the length of their first renewal term, rather than owing the full 40 hours regardless of how recently they were licensed.
• LMFTs licensed before January 1, 2024 must have completed the full 40-hour requirement (including the 3 ethics, 4 cultural competency, and 4 supervision-if-applicable hours) at their most recent renewal; those licensed after that date should check the Board’s CE proration chart for their specific prorated total.
• Board-approved LMFT supervisors need an additional 4 hours in supervision-specific content, on top of the standard 40-hour requirement — a real addition, not hours drawn from the existing total.
• Supervisors more broadly take on real responsibility in Minnesota’s system, and having a clear clinical supervision agreement in place from the outset helps define expectations for both parties throughout the supervised experience period.

CE Tracker Templates for Mental Health Professionals

Even with a clear picture of your state’s requirements, actually staying on top of continuing education across a full renewal cycle is a different challenge — tracking which hours you’ve completed, which mandated categories still need attention, where you’ve saved your certificates, and when your actual deadline hits. A CE tracker template solves this by giving you one place to log activities as you complete them, monitor progress against your specific requirements, and pull everything together when it’s time to submit your renewal — rather than reconstructing two years of CE history in a panic the week before your license expires.

Get started with the free CE Tracker Template to organize your current renewal cycle, or manage your complete CE renewal process from planning through submission with this comprehensive CE Tracker Template (pictured above).

Final Thoughts on Minnesota CE Requirements

Minnesota’s shared 40-hour baseline across all four professions can create a false sense of uniformity that doesn’t hold up once you look at the actual renewal dates, mandated content, and compact status underneath it. The mix of one fixed deadline (LMFT) and three individualized ones (LPCC, LICSW, psychology) is a genuinely easy detail to get backwards if you’re dual-licensed or relocating from a state with a more uniform structure.

The staggered rollout of cultural competency requirements across professions is also worth remembering specifically — it’s a good example of how a seemingly consistent statewide trend can actually reflect several separate, profession-specific decisions made at different points in time.

References

• Minnesota Board of Behavioral Health and Therapy. (n.d.). LPC/LPCC renewal. Resource
• Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy. (n.d.). License renewal. Resource
• Minnesota Board of Psychology. (n.d.). License renewal. Resource
• Minnesota Counseling Association. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Minnesota Psychological Association. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• NASW Minnesota Chapter. (n.d.). About. Resource
• Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (n.d.). Home. Resource