Focus 2026

Certification and Content goals for 2026

Let's rewind to 2025 real quick, and the reason I can say it'll be quick, is because I only wrote and published 2 blog articles in 2025. Ironically, one of them was about my 2025 goals. Now, to my defense, writing (more) blog posts wasn't one of them. That being said, I do want to make it one of my goals for 2026. But before that, let's quickly look back at my 2025 goals.

In 2025, it was mostly about the exams I wanted to pass. I had done the whole Kubernetes certification path, and now I wanted to zoom-in a bit more specifically into the Red Hat ecosystem by first passing the RHCSA. The reason I wanted to invest more into Red Hat is because in late 2024, I got my first assignment as a consultant for a governmental organization where I mainly worked with OpenShift. Hence, it made sense to me, and it still does, to get Red Hat certified.

Now, it's important to know that Red Hat has different levels of certifications. For system administrators/DevOps, it starts from becoming RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) by passing the EX200 exam, then becoming RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) by passing the EX294 exam, and ultimately becoming RHCA (Red Hat Certified Architect) by passing 5 additional exams. Last year, I set it my goal to pass the EX200 and EX294 exams, but instead, I passed the EX200, EX188 (Podman), and EX280 (OpenShift) exams. It's not that I didn't pass the EX294, it's just that I decided to focus on the other two first, since I was already working with those technologies in my day-to-day work.

So what are my 2026 goals?

Well, pass the EX294 exam and 3 additional RHCA certified exams, which would make me RHCA. The 3 additional exams I have chosen will be the EX380 (OpenShift Automation & Integration), EX370 (OpenShift Data Foundation), and EX480 (MultiCluster Management). This combination basically says: "I can deploy OpenShift, automate it at scale, solve storage challenges, and manage it across multiple clusters".

Is that all? In terms of certification, yes.

I also already mentioned that I do want to make it my goal to write and publish more on my blog and I want to focus a bit more on technical posts instead of "my DevOps journey", so consider this to be the kick-off post for 2026. Bye for now.