If you started learning Chinese before 2021, the HSK you remember had six levels and about 5,000 words at the top. HSK 3.0 — published in 2021 as 《国际中文教育中文水平等级标准》 — keeps six beginner-to-advanced bands, adds levels 7–9, and grows the total vocabulary to about 11,000 words. As of 2026 there is a second layer: the official 《HSK 考试大纲》 (exam syllabus, published 2025-11, effective 2026-07) turns that standard into concrete per-level word lists — which is what the exams test, and what every word list on this site follows.
The three big changes
- Nine levels instead of six. Levels 1–6 cover the old ground at a similar pace; levels 7–9 form a single advanced band, reported as 7, 8, or 9 from one exam.
- More vocabulary. HSK 1–6 grew from roughly 5,000 to about 5,400 words, and the 7–9 band adds around 5,600 more — the exam syllabus lists 11,000 entries in total, alongside 3,088 characters to recognize.
- Skills beyond words. The syllabus also spells out grammar points and task types per level, and from level 7 up it tests translation, presentation, and academic-style tasks — not just listening, reading, and writing.
The 2025 syllabus re-leveled the early levels
The 2021 standard gave each of levels 1–6 roughly 500–1,140 new words. The exam syllabus redistributes that vocabulary into steadier steps, counted in new words per level: 300 → 200 → 500 → 1,000 → 1,600 → 1,800, then 5,600 for the combined 7–9 band. Cumulatively that is 300 words for HSK 1, 500 by HSK 2, 1,000 by HSK 3, 2,000 by HSK 4, 3,600 by HSK 5, and 5,400 by HSK 6. The practical upshot: HSK 1 has become a genuinely small first step, and the early levels no longer balloon the way the standard's raw counts suggested.
Characters changed shape too. The syllabus separates 3,088 认读字 (characters to recognize, across all nine levels) from 1,200 书写字 (characters to write by hand) — and handwriting only starts at HSK 2, with 100 characters in the 1–2 band and 150 new ones per level through HSK 6.
What stayed the same
Levels 1–2 are still the entry bands most learners meet first, the passing logic of the exams has not turned upside down, and the old HSK 1–6 certificates remain valid. The level numbers still roughly map onto each other — but the word lists behind them have been re-cut, so your textbook and the exam syllabus may disagree on where a specific word lands.
Which list should you study from?
Study from the list your exam actually tests — since July 2026, that is the exam syllabus. New textbooks are catching up to it, and the vocabulary levels shown across this site — on character pages, in the practice tool, and in the complete word lists for HSK 1 through HSK 7-9 — follow the syllabus entry for entry (all 11,000 of them, with homograph readings counted separately). If you are unsure what level you are at, skim the HSK word lists in order: the first list where most words look unfamiliar is your level.
Turning the list into writing practice
The syllabus finally makes the handwriting workload concrete: 1,200 characters to write by hand — words you can read, characters you must write. A practical approach: take your level's word list, print it as a worksheet from the generator, and write one grid per word; the generator annotates every grid with pinyin and shows the stroke order for new characters. One printed list per level makes the progress visible — and makes the vocabulary stick on paper, where exams still live.