The CDP Scoring System in 2026: How Scores Work and How to Score Highly

CDP is a global environmental not-for-profit, founded in 2000, that runs an independent system for organisations to report their environmental impact. It gives companies, cities and governments one place to disclose data across climate change, water security, forests and other environmental issues, well beyond carbon alone, and it shares what they report with the investors and customers who request it. More than 23,100 organisations disclosed through it in the 2025 cycle, including over 22,000 companies, more than 4,400 of them for the first time.

Most of those companies received a CDP score. That score is increasingly used by the investors and customers who request the disclosure. In 2026, over 540 financial institutions, holding more than US$110 trillion in assets, requested data from over 43,000 organisations through CDP.

This article looks specifically at how that scoring works in the 2026 cycle: what is a CDP score, how the levels and letter grades fit together, what separates a high score from a low one, the nuances for SMEs and how hard the top bands are to reach.

What is a CDP score?

A CDP score is a letter grade that reflects the quality and completeness of a company's environmental disclosure for the reporting year. On the full corporate questionnaire, scores run from A at the top down to D- at the bottom. Companies that are asked to disclose but do not are marked "Did not disclose", and responses that arrive too late or are otherwise ineligible are marked "not scored".

One point is worth understanding up front. CDP's own methodology is clear that the score is not a measure of how "green" a company is, or of the size of its footprint. It is an indication of how thoroughly a company has assessed and managed its environmental impacts, and how completely it has disclosed that work, over the reporting year.

A few mechanics shape every score:

• CDP, together with an accredited scoring partner, assesses the response itself. CDP does not independently verify the underlying data a company submits.
• Only information inside the response counts. Linked websites, reports and attachments are generally not scored unless a question specifically asks for them, and CDP does not look at information held outside the response. The single exception is the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) database, which CDP cross-checks for validated emissions targets. 
• Responses are only scored if submitted in one of five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese or Chinese.

What does CDP score in 2026?

CDP brings several environmental themes into one integrated questionnaire, but it scores each issue separately, with its own methodology and its own letter grade. A company can therefore hold different scores for climate change, forests and water security at the same time.

What is and is not scored this cycle:

Three changes stand out for 2026: the full questionnaire adds a new aviation sector, financial services companies receive public forests and water security scores for the first time, and all seven forest-risk commodities are now scored, with rubber, cocoa and coffee joining the original four (timber products, palm oil, cattle products and soy).  

How does the CDP scoring system work?

Every response is assessed across four levels, in order. They represent the steps a company moves through as its environmental management matures, from simply reporting data at the bottom to demonstrating best practice at the top.

Disclosure is about completeness. The question here is whether the company has actually reported the data CDP asks for: its emissions figures, who is responsible for the issue internally, its targets, and so on. It rewards presence and completeness of information, not the quality of any action behind it. Nearly every scored question contributes to this level, which is why a thorough first-time submission can earn a solid Disclosure score even before a company has done much to reduce its impact.

Awareness is about understanding. It asks whether the company grasps how an environmental issue intersects with its own business: the specific risks it faces, the dependencies it has, and the financial impact those could carry. A company can score here by showing it has looked properly at the issue, even if it has not yet acted on what it found.

Management is about action. It looks for evidence that the company is actively managing the issue: targets in place, reduction initiatives underway, policies, and processes and oversight to keep them on track. This is the level that separates companies doing something about their impact from those that have only measured and understood it.

Leadership is about best practice. It is reserved for companies that can demonstrate the strongest, most transparent practice on an issue: independently verified data, science-aligned targets, comprehensive coverage of their value chain, board-level accountability, and detailed, quantified actions rather than broad commitments.

How are CDP letter scores worked out?

At each level, CDP works out a percentage: the points a company earned divided by the points available to it. Two things are worth knowing about that calculation.

First, the points available differ from one company to another, because the questionnaire routes people to different questions depending on their size, sector and activities. Scoring everything as a percentage evens this out, so a company is not penalised for being shown fewer questions.

Second, the levels are weighted differently. At Disclosure and Awareness, the percentage is a simple, flat calculation where every point counts equally. At Management and Leadership, it is weighted: questions are grouped into categories, and the categories that matter most for a company's sector are worth more. So at the higher levels, a point scored on a topic that is material to your industry counts for more than a point scored on a minor one.

Now to the part that tends to cause confusion: the band table, and why no level except Leadership runs all the way to 100%.

The key idea is that a company climbs the levels one at a time, and its final letter reflects the highest level it reaches. Within any given level, the percentage it scores decides whether it lands on the lower grade (the minus) or the upper grade. The top of each level's range is, in effect, the bar it has to clear to climb to the next level. Clear that bar, and the company is no longer graded at the level below; it has moved up a rung and is now assessed at the next level. That is why Disclosure tops out at 80% rather than 100%: anyone scoring above 80% at Disclosure has climbed into Awareness, so they are graded there (C- or C as a minimum), not held at D. Only Leadership runs to 100%, because it is the top, with no further level to climb into.

There is one more gate. Alongside the percentage thresholds, CDP applies essential criteria: specific requirements that have to be met to be credited at a level at all. For climate change these apply from Awareness up through Leadership and the A List. For forests and water security they currently apply only at Leadership and the A List. Clearing the percentage is necessary but not sufficient; miss an essential criterion for a level and the score stays at the level below.

The provisional bands CDP applied for the 2025 cycle on the full corporate questionnaire, which it reviews and can adjust each year, were:

The same thresholds apply across climate change, forests and water security. Read a single row as: "a company assessed at this level, scoring in this range, lands on this grade." The upper figure in each level (80%, 80%, 75%) is the point at which a company climbs to the next level instead.

What does a Management-band climate response look like in practice?

The levels are easier to picture with an example. Take a fictional 600-person manufacturer disclosing on climate change for the second time.

• It clears Disclosure because it has reported a full Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory measured to the GHG Protocol (the standard most companies use to measure emissions), named the board committee responsible for climate, and listed its reduction targets. Where data is genuinely missing, it has explained why in the open-text fields rather than leaving cells blank, which CDP reads as non-disclosure. That completeness earns strong Disclosure points.
• It clears Awareness because it has identified its main climate-related risks, such as carbon pricing on its energy-intensive processes and rising costs for key raw materials, alongside the opportunities, and has described where in the business they sit and their potential financial impact.
• It earns Management points because it is visibly acting: it has an emissions reduction target, several live reduction initiatives with owners and timelines (moving its largest site onto a renewable electricity contract, a phased fleet electrification plan), and board oversight of progress against them.
• It stops short of Leadership because its targets are not yet validated as science-based, only its Scope 1 and 2 data has been independently verified rather than Scope 3, and some Scope 3 categories are still estimated from spend rather than measured from activity data. Closing those gaps over the next cycle or two is what would move it up toward Leadership and, eventually, the A List.

The same pattern holds across every issue. Completeness gets a company onto the ladder, understanding and action move it up, and verified, science-aligned best practice is what the top bands reward.

How is the CDP SME score different?

Smaller companies can complete a streamlined SME questionnaire instead of the full one. A company is eligible if it has no more than 1,000 employees and annual revenue of no more than US$250 million. Cross either of those thresholds and only the full corporate questionnaire is available, though an eligible smaller company can always choose to complete the full version anyway. Companies asked to disclose by the RE100 initiative cannot use the SME version. Around 11,000 SMEs disclosed through it in 2025.

The SME questionnaire is shorter and climate-focused, with fewer and simpler datapoints and no sector-specific questions. In 2026 it adds integrated forests and water datapoints to help smaller firms start on those issues, but only climate change is scored.

It uses the same four levels, labelled SME Disclosure, SME Awareness, SME Management and SME Leadership. The headline change for 2026 is that SME Leadership is now scored, so an SME A grade is available for the first time. SME letters run from SME A down to SME D, and the "SME" prefix keeps them distinct from full corporate scores. Note that the published SME bands do not use the plus and minus granularity of the full questionnaire.

The provisional SME bands for 2026 were:

How do you score highly on CDP?

The four levels show what to aim for. In practice, a stronger score comes down to a handful of things:

• Report completely. Disclosure points reward filling in what is asked. Blank required cells and partly completed tables lose points. Some questions are all-or-nothing, where a single missing datapoint scores zero, while others award points in proportion to how much is completed. A blank field is read as non-disclosure, so where a measurement genuinely has not been made, it is better to leave the figure blank and explain why in the open-text field than to leave it unexplained.
• Put the detail in the response. Because linked documents and external sources are not scored, the points come from what is typed into the questionnaire itself.
• Make answers specific to the company. CDP explicitly rewards detail that is true for your business and not just your industry in general: references to your own activities, sites, products, methodologies and decisions. Generic, boilerplate answers score lower than ones that show the issue has been considered in your own context.
• Show awareness, not just numbers. Explain how climate, water or forest issues affect the business, including the risks, opportunities and their financial impact.
• Evidence management. Document the actual processes, policies and actions in place, with clear reasoning behind them, rather than stating intentions.
• Aim for best practice at Leadership. Specific, quantified reduction actions and credible, science-aligned targets carry more weight than broad pledges. Validated SBTi targets are recognised through CDP's cross-check with the SBTi database.
• Meet the essential criteria. Passing a level's threshold is necessary but not sufficient; the essential criteria for that level have to be met too.
• Be consistent. Because of the threshold system, a patchy response is held back however strong its best sections are.
• Submit in a scored language, before the scoring deadline.

How hard is it to get a top CDP score?

Getting onto the ladder is achievable. A complete first submission earns a Disclosure-level score. Climbing is progressively harder, by design.

Each level has to be cleared before the next is credited. Essential criteria gate the higher levels. And the system deliberately holds back responses that are strong in places but thin elsewhere. Leadership and the A List ask for demonstrable best practice, including verified data, ambitious science-based targets, board-level accountability and quantified action, which is why the top tier is a relatively small group.

For many companies disclosing for the first time, the realistic near-term aim is to report completely and then work up through Awareness and Management over successive cycles, as data quality improves and reduction activity builds. The score for any given year reflects the action and disclosure of that reporting year, not a company's standing in perpetuity.

Who can see a company's CDP score?

Whether a score is published depends on who requested the disclosure:

• Requested by capital markets signatories (investors): the score is made public.
• Requested by other requesters, such as a supply chain customer: the score stays private, unless it is an A (or SME A), in which case it is made public.

This is worth knowing before disclosing, because it determines whether a lower score is visible or not.

When does a response need to be in to be scored?

CDP runs an annual cycle. For 2026:

• 16 September 2026: the scoring deadline. Responses submitted by this date are eligible for a score. Edits can still be made afterwards, but they will not be scored.
• Week commencing 26 October 2026: the final close, after which the questionnaire locks and no further edits are possible.
• The CDP admin fee must be paid before a company can submit. It applies to disclosing companies, including SMEs, but not to cities, states or regions.
• A limited number of On-Demand Extensions are available, for a fee and at CDP's discretion, moving the scoring deadline to 30 September 2026. They must be requested by 29 September.

How Seedling helps with a strong CDP score

A CDP score is only as good as the data underneath it. The strongest responses start with a complete, accurate, GHG Protocol-aligned footprint across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, a credible plan to reduce emissions, science-aligned targets and, for the top bands, third-party verification.

That is what we build with our clients. We pair carbon software with one-to-one support from a dedicated carbon expert, so you get a full-scope footprint, a quantified decarbonisation plan, SBTi-aligned targets and verification, all in the format CDP's questionnaire asks for. If a CDP submission is on the horizon, we can help you get the foundations in place well before the September deadline.

Frequently asked questions

What scores can a company get on CDP?‍

On the full corporate questionnaire, A down to D-. On the SME questionnaire, SME A down to SME D. Companies that are requested to disclose but do not are marked "Did not disclose", and late or ineligible responses are marked "not scored".

Does CDP score water, forests and plastics as well as climate?‍

Climate change is always scored. Forests and water security are scored where a company is requested to report on them or opts in. Plastics, biodiversity and ocean are not scored in the 2026 cycle.

What is the difference between a CDP A and the A List?‍

A is the top letter band. The A List is the published group of companies that achieve it, which carries its own essential criteria.

Can a low CDP score stay private?‍

It depends on who requested the disclosure. Scores requested by capital markets signatories are made public. Scores requested by other parties, such as supply chain customers, stay private unless the company earns an A.

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