HSK levels explained: the new syllabus, counted

The syllabus is the HSK 考试大纲 — Syllabus for the Chinese Proficiency Test — published by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation in November 2025 with an effective date of July 2026. The official test site files it under HSK 3.0.

There are nine levels, and the syllabus treats them as seven bands: levels 1 to 6 each get their own, and levels 7, 8 and 9 share one. That grouping is not cosmetic — the top three levels share a single task list, topic list, word list, character list and grammar list, so the syllabus describes them as one stretch of the language rather than three.

What the syllabus does not say is how that maps onto exam papers, and this article will not guess. Registration options and paper format are published separately for each test and sitting; check those for the sitting you book rather than inferring them from the banding above.

Every figure below is counted from the lists printed in that syllabus, on 26 August 2026. We counted twice by different methods — the highest index in each list, and the number of distinct entries — and the two agree exactly across all thirteen lists, with no gaps in any of them. If a number here disagrees with a study blog, the blog is most likely describing the older six-level standard.

One thing we could not verify and will not guess: the fee. The official site publishes test dates and syllabus documents but no price, and HSK fees are set by the test centre. The only correct number is the one your own centre publishes.

The vocabulary list runs from entry 1 to entry 11,000 in one continuous sequence, and each level is a slice of it.

HSK 1 — 300 new words, 300 in total.

HSK 2 — 200 new, 500 in total.

HSK 3 — 500 new, 1,000 in total.

HSK 4 — 1,000 new, 2,000 in total.

HSK 5 — 1,600 new, 3,600 in total.

HSK 6 — 1,800 new, 5,400 in total.

HSK 7–9 — 5,600 new, 11,000 in total.

Every boundary is a round number: 300, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,600, 5,400, 11,000. This is a designed ladder, not the result of cutting a corpus at its natural joints. That is worth knowing, because it means the distance between two levels tells you how much vocabulary the designers assigned — not how much harder the language itself got.

HSK 6 was the top of the old six-level exam and it is still the level most serious learners aim at. Reaching it from HSK 5 means adding 1,800 words.

HSK 7–9 adds 5,600.

That single band asks for more new vocabulary than levels 1 through 6 contain in total — 5,600 against 5,400. More than half the entire word list sits above HSK 6.

If you are planning a study timeline, this is the fact that ruins the naive arithmetic. “A level every six months” is a reasonable plan up to HSK 6 and a fantasy above it. Treat HSK 7–9 as a separate project of roughly the same size as everything that came before it, because by the syllabus's own count, that is what it is.

The syllabus keeps two separate character lists, and conflating them is the most expensive mistake in Chinese study planning.

认读字 are the characters you must be able to read. 书写字 are the characters you must be able to write by hand. The second list is far shorter — and the syllabus names exactly which characters are on it.

Characters to read, cumulatively: 246 at HSK 1, 371 by HSK 2, 655 by HSK 3, 1,096 by HSK 4, 1,527 by HSK 5, 1,940 by HSK 6, and 3,088 by HSK 7–9.

Characters to write by hand, cumulatively: 100 across HSK 1–2 together, 250 by HSK 3, 400 by HSK 4, 550 by HSK 5, 700 by HSK 6, and 1,200 by HSK 7–9.

At the top of the scale that is 1,200 characters to write against 3,088 to read — you handwrite 39% of what you read. At HSK 1–2 it is 100 against 371, or 27%. From HSK 3 upward the ratio settles between roughly 36% and 39%.

Handwriting is the single most time-expensive activity in learning Chinese, and by the exam's own syllabus most of it is optional. That does not make writing practice worthless — it is a real memory aid, and it is how many people learn to see components rather than shapes. It means that if your goal is a specific HSK level, there is a published list of exactly which characters you owe by hand, and it is a minority of the ones you owe by eye.

The word and character lists get all the attention, but the first part of the syllabus is a task list, written across four skills: what you can understand by ear, what you can ask and answer aloud, what you can read, and what you can write.

The writing tasks form a ladder that is more useful than any word count for judging where you actually are. At the bottom the requirement is to write a sentence or two — introducing yourself, a purchase, a plan. Higher up it becomes a paragraph. Then a short text. At the top it is an article: introducing an idiom, arguing a view about a social or economic question, discussing classical poetry.

If you can write a paragraph about your own week but not a structured article about a topic you did not choose, the word list is not the thing standing between you and the top band.

One limit on this document, stated so a reader does not over-read it: the syllabus specifies content, not paper format. How many sections your particular sitting has, and how long each runs, is published separately for each test and format. Check that for the sitting you book rather than inferring it from here.

We sell lessons, so read this in the direction that costs us.

The lists are free, official, and no teacher improves them. The syllabus contains every word and every character you owe at every level. Paying a person to walk you through a vocabulary list is paying a person to read aloud.

Handwriting is self-study. It needs repetition and a pen, not a scheduled appointment with another human being.

Tones are the opposite case, and the one place we will argue hard for a teacher: a tone error is inaudible to the person making it. You cannot self-correct a distinction you cannot hear, which is precisely what a listener is for. That argument is made in full in our guide to Mandarin tones, elsewhere on this site.

Speaking has its own exam. The official test body lists the HSKK spoken test separately from the HSK. If your target is an HSK level, conversation practice is not the efficient purchase. If your target is the spoken certificate, it is the only relevant one. Decide which you are buying before you buy it.

Choose your level from what you need it for, then check the two lists rather than a summary of them: how many of the words at that level do you know, and how many of the handwriting characters can you actually produce on paper without looking.

If you are looking at HSK 7–9, budget for it as a separate undertaking rather than as the next rung on the same ladder.

And nobody can promise you a pass — not a school, not an app, not a teacher, not us. Anyone wording it otherwise is selling something they do not control.