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This article is for disclosing companies who have recently received their CDP score or are preparing to do so. It explains how CDP scores are developed, when they are released, what information is included in your initial score, and how to interpret your results. It also summarizes CDP’s commitment to transparency and quality.

Disclosers can use this article alongside the scoring materials on our website. You can find the key supporting documents listed at the bottom of this article.

Contents

What is a CDP score?

CDP scores measure how well Disclosers understand and manage their environmental impacts. Each response is evaluated using a detailed methodology that assesses Disclosure, Awareness, Management, and Leadership across key environmental issues.

CDP undertakes scoring by assessing Disclosers against a scoring methodology, which details how each question in the questionnaire will be scored, evaluating the Discloser's progress towards environmental stewardship. The scoring methodology provides a roadmap to companies on how to achieve best practice, and by developing the scoring methodology each year to align with best practice, CDP aims to drive changes in corporate behavior to improve environmental performance.

In 2026, CDP continues to score companies that have completed the Full questionnaire on Climate Change, Forests, and Water Security. The Plastics and Biodiversity, and newly added Ocean issues remain unscored in 2026, to allow companies to build capacity in these areas.

The SME questionnaire is scored for Climate Change only.

For a full overview on scoring, please see the relevant Scoring Introduction document: Full Corporate / SME.

How does CDP score Disclosers?

Scoring is carried out by CDP and accredited partners under strict quality assurance procedures. Scores are based solely on the data provided in your CDP response. External links or attachments are excluded unless specifically stated in the scoring methodology. Disclosers should ensure responses are complete, accurate, and current.

Each response is assessed separately against CDP’s public scoring methodology per relevant environmental issue: Climate Change, Forests, and Water Security. Sector-specific questionnaires are scored as per the relevant sector-specific scoring methodology.

If a requested company did not provide a response or provided insufficient information to be scored, they will be marked as ‘Did not disclose’.

Scoring levels

Disclosers are evaluated across four scoring levels, representing stages of environmental maturity:

  • Disclosure (D/D–): Measures the completeness of a company’s reporting. The number of points allocated to each question depends on both the amount of data requested and their relative importance to data users.

  • Awareness (C/C–): Reflects the understanding of how environmental issues relate to the company’s activities and impacts. This level indicates awareness but not yet sufficient action.

  • Management (B/B–): Recognizes evidence of action and processes to manage environmental issues.

  • Leadership (A/A–): Represents best practice performance and transparency on environmental issues.

Essential Criteria (Full questionnaire only)

Essential Criteria are absolute requirements that must be met to achieve a scoring level. The application of Essential Criteria ensures a consistent baseline of reporting at all levels of CDP scores.

Failure to meet Essential Criteria may limit a Discloser’s score. Please see our Scoring Essential Criteria Climate Change, Forests and Water Security documents for more information.

How to read your score

Overall score

Your overall score reflects disclosure quality and matruity, rather than absolute environmental performance, it is based on your performance across the scoring levels (Disclosure → Leadership), weighted scoring categories, and the application of Essential Critieria.

A scored response is evaluated first at Disclosure level. To progress from one scoring level to the next, a minimum score threshold and all Essential Criteria for that level must be met. If either of these conditions are not fulfilled, your final score will remain at the previous level, even if there are areas of strong performance.

The resulting overall score will appear in the CDP Portal at the top of your score page, with category scores displayed below.

For more detail on thresholds and the scoring structure, please see the relevant Scoring Introduction document: Full Corporate / SME.

Category scores

Disclosers receive a breakdown of category scores, which are groupings of questions by topic that do not necessarily correlate to individual questionnaire modules. Category scores provide a snapshot of a Discloser’s performance across key question groups.

Weightings are applied to category scores for the calculation of the overall score at the Management and Leadership levels only. Weightings reflect the relative importance of each category in an organization's progression towards environmental stewardship, within the boundaries of the CDP questionnaire and available scoring criteria.

Please see the Category Mapping and Category Weightings documents in the 'Companies' or 'SME' sections of our How to disclose page for full details.

Further explanation on both sub-sections above is available in the ‘Final score allocation’ section of the relevant Scoring Introduction document: Full Corporate / SME.

Forest scoring commodities

Companies disclosing on Forests (excluding Financial Services companies) report on up to seven forest risk commodities. All forest risk commodities will be scored in 2026 – new for rubber, cocoa, and coffee – and contribute to a single Forests score.

Commodity sub-scores contribute to an overall Forests score but do not individually determine A-List eligibility. Please see the ‘Forests scoring’ and ‘Commodity sub-scores’ section (page 6 and 7) of our Full Corporate Questionnaire Scoring Introduction document for further details.

Supplier Engagement Assessment (SEA)

The Supplier Engagement Assessment (SEA) is CDP’s framework for evaluating ho well purchasing organizations engage suppliers on environmental performance, by setting best-practice criteria and recognizing top performers (such as via the annual Supplier Engagement Leaderboard). It applies to Full Corporate questionnaire Disclosers on Climate Change who have submitted their response before the scoring deadline. This is not relevant for SME Disclosers. For more information on the SEA, please see our SEA Scoring Introduction and SEA Methodology documents.

Note: SEA scores will be released at a later date. These will not be available at the time of the initial score release.

Timeline of score release

The full disclosure cycle has several stages to ensure consistency and quality of submissions, as follows:

  • Response window: This is the timeframe when Disclosers prepare and submit their questionnaire responses via the CDP Portal before the scoring deadline, 11:59pm International Dateline West on September 16, 2026.

  • Scoring and quality review: After the response window, CDP’s accredited scoring partners and internal scoring teams assess responses using the relevant scoring methodology and quality assurance processes.

  • Initial score release: CDP makes scores available to Disclosers on the week of November 30, 2026 through the CDP Portal, providing visibility of their results ahead of public release.

  • Public release: Final scores are published on CDP’s website later in the week of November 30, 2026, for companies that have a public score. Review our rules on public scoring in ourUnderstanding response and score privacy article.

Disclosers will be notified of the schedule and key milestones via email and through the CDP Portal. More information on the key dates for the 2026 Disclosure cycle can be found on our website.

What’s included in the initial score release

2026 scores will be released to Disclosers during the week of November 30, 2026. Scored Disclosers receive the following:

  • Overall Score: Their score (D– to A) based on the assessment of the response against the public scoring methodology.

  • Category Breakdown: Results by key scoring categories such as Governance, Targets, and Risk Disclosure. Forests Disclosers to the Full questionnaire will also receive sub-scores for each disclosed commodity.

  • Sector and regional averages: Where available, comparison to sectoral and regional averages to support analysis and planning.

These results allow you to review your performance ahead of public release, if applicable.

Why was I not scored?

In certain cases, a Discloser may not receive as score for the current scoring cycle. The reason behind this will be clearly stated underneath the ‘Score’ tile in your company’s Portal. Common reasons include:

  • Language of submission: in 2025,CDP will only score responses submitted in English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese.Responses submitted in any other language (where ‘Other – please specify’ is selected as the language of their response) are not eligible to be scored.

  • Missed scoring deadline: If your response was submitted after the scoring deadline, 11:59pm International Dateline West on September 16, 2026, it may not be eligible for scoring.

  • Other eligibility factors: CDP may not score a response if it does not meet required conditions as per Section 12 ofCDP’s Terms of disclosure.

If you have questions about your eligibility or believe you should have been scored, please raise a case through My Support in the CDP Help Center. When raising a case via My Support, please select the user type ‘I am a discloser’, the category ‘Score related Support’ and the subcategory ‘Organization Score Query’ to ensure your case goes to the correct team.

Transparency and quality: our commitment

CDP is committed to ensuring scores are accurate, transparent, and fair. All scoring follows standardized methodologies, Essential Criteria, and multi-layered quality assurance. Please see more information in the relevant Scoring Introduction doument: Full Corporate / SME.

Score Appeal Process

If a Discloser believes an error has occurred in a score, CDP offers an appeal process. If a Discloser wishes to engage in the score appeal process, they may submit an appeal form. Each appeal is independently reviewed by CDP’s scoring oversight team. Please review the Score Appeal Policy in the relevant Scoring Introduction document for further information: Full Corporate (page 16) / SME (page 14).

CDP will communicate the outcome once the review is complete. CDP reserves the right to fully review a Discloser’s response, including content that was not mentioned in the appeal. The result of the appeal is final.

This process helps ensure that all companies are scored fairly, and that CDP maintains the highest standards of data quality and transparency.

For appeal support, please raise a case through via My Support on the CDP Help Center. When raising a case via My Support, please select the user type ‘I am a discloser’, the category ‘Score related Support’ and the subcategory ‘Organization Score Query’ to ensure your case goes to the correct team.

CDP Scoring resources

All mentioned resources in this article can be found on CDP’s website. The following direct links may be useful:


If you continue to experience issues after the following the guidance above, please contact CDP Support using the 'Contact Support' button at the end of this article. If you are raising a case directly through the My Support page in the CDP Help Center, please select the user type ‘I am a discloser’, the category ‘Score related Support’ and the subcategory ‘Organization Score Query’ to ensure your case goes to the correct team.

For any guidance on raising a support case or creating a Help Center account please refer to our How to raise a case in the CDP Help Center article.

Keywords: scoring, CDP score, scoring methodology, scoring levels, Essential Criteria, categories, weightings, overall score, leadership score, management score, awareness score, disclosure score, score release, scoring timeline, score appeal, transparency, data quality, Climate Change, Forests, Water security, sector methodology, F score, Did not disclose.
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