HubSpot Academy quietly relaunched on September 3, 2025, and most admins walked right past it. New home tab, new layout, watch later, playlists you can assign to your team, and a Breeze assistant inside the portal that recommends Academy lessons based on the tool you're looking at. The week of June 1 through 5 is now World Learning Week (formerly World Certification Week), with $5 going to charity for every certification and $3 for every lesson. In this live episode, George, Max, and Chad clicked through the new Academy in real time and called out what works, what's still missing, and why the "expired certification" debate is more interesting than it looks.
Why You Should Care About a Learning Tool Update
If you onboard humans into HubSpot for a living, the Academy update changes how you do that job. Breeze is now context aware, so a new admin can ask one question inside the workflow they're trying to build and get the right lesson, with a video, served on the spot. That's the difference between a tab graveyard and a guided onboarding experience.
If you're an agency operator or a super admin, playlists let you turn your onboarding curriculum into something you can save once and assign forever. And if you've been telling yourself you don't have time for a full certification, World Learning Week was rebuilt to meet you where you actually are.
Breeze Now Recommends Academy Lessons Based on What You're Looking At
George opened the workflows tab, brought up Breeze, and asked one simple question. He did not name the tool. He just said, "Do you have a HubSpot Academy lesson for this tool?" Breeze checked which tool he was on, returned the right Academy lesson with a video link, and offered to branch the next recommendation into beginner workflow setup or advanced automation strategy. He repeated the test on segments. Worked there too.
“I said, do you have a HubSpot Academy lesson for this tool, which then it checked to see what tool I was on.”
For super admins who used to drown humans in tabs during onboarding, this is the upgrade. Instead of building a doc that says "go watch these three Academy lessons," you can teach your team to ask Breeze inside the tool they're standing in. The right lesson finds them.
What's still missing in the Breeze and Academy handshake:
- Breeze can't yet see your Academy completion transcript directly, so it can't recommend the next certification based on what you already finished
- It can't see your seat or your permissions, so a sales rep gets the same firehose a super admin sees
- The brand new slash-command index pages are in beta, so Breeze sometimes can't tell you exactly where a button is when those views are involved
None of those are dealbreakers. They're a roadmap. If you're a HubSpot admin who has been waiting for the Academy to feel personalized, this is the closest it has ever been.
The Academy Got Buried Under the Help Menu (Here's Where to Click)
If you went looking for the Academy after the September 3, 2025 redesign, you may have wondered if HubSpot sunsetted it. The hosts admit they did the same thing. The Academy is now under the Help button inside the portal, not at the top of the nav.
“If you haven't seen the HubSpot Academy since September 3rd of 2025, whoopsie. Like maybe go check it. It is way different.”
It kind of makes sense (education is help, help is education), but it's the difference between two clicks and one for any admin who lives in the platform. If you have a fresh-eyed admin on your team, tell them where to look or they'll assume it got cut. The crew wished the link sat one level higher in the nav and asked listeners to weigh in at sidekickstrategies.com, where comments are now back on the blog.
World Learning Week Is a Wider On-Ramp Than World Certification Week Was
Same week (June 1 through 5). Same charity goal ($5 per certification, $3 per lesson). New name. The rename signals microlearning instead of multi-hour certification grinds, which lowers the activation energy for anyone who has been telling themselves they don't have a Tuesday afternoon to spend on a single course.
“It feels like they're making it a lot more accessible and less daunting. Maybe the idea of getting a whole certification sounds a little daunting to people. Now you can still make a contribution without feeling like you have to go through a college degree course to do it.”
Mark June 1 through 5 on the calendar. Pick one lesson per day. That's $3 to charity per lesson, your skills get sharper, and the week ends with a learning streak that wasn't there before. If a relevant certification fits, run it. If not, lessons count.
The full Academy experience opens during the week: certifications, courses, playlists, live sessions, and more. Visit academy.hubspot.com/world-learning-week to RSVP and plan your week.
Playlists Turn Onboarding Into a Copy-Paste Exercise
Every HubSpot partner has been asked the same question: "What are the first three certifications my new admin should take?" Until now the answer lived in a Google Doc somebody had to keep updated. Now it lives in a playlist you build once, share, assign to your team, and duplicate for the next hire.
George walked through his 2026 Certifications playlist live on the show. The structure:
- Five certifications, 46 lessons, sequenced in the order he wants his team to take them
- Click any lesson to launch it, click a button to assign the whole playlist to a team member
- Duplicate the playlist for the next hire and adjust
- Share it externally if you coach humans who don't have a HubSpot account yet
The hosts pushed for one more upgrade: playlist templates. Imagine HubSpot shipping a curated playlist for "New Sales Rep on Sales Hub Professional," "Marketing Manager on Marketing Hub Enterprise," or "Salesforce-to-HubSpot Transition." One click, it's in your playlist library, assign and go. Until then, build your own and treat it like a living asset.
The Expired Certification Debate Is Real, and the Hosts Split on It
Some HubSpot Academy certifications expire after a year. Some after two. Some you can't even retake once they're expired. That sparked a real conversation between the three hosts about whether certifications should expire at all.
Max's take: just show the year I earned it.
His argument: a college degree doesn't expire. It says when you got it. A potential employer or partner can decide what that 2019 credential means today. Adding an "expired" stamp feels like the wrong signal for credentials humans paid time and attention to earn.
“My degree doesn't expire. It just seems kind of silly that these certifications expire.”
George's take: the industry isn't teeth.
Marketing, sales, service, and RevOps move too fast for a 2019 certification to mean what it meant in 2019. That's why renewing makes sense. The hidden lift falls back on HubSpot: if certifications expire, the certification content has to keep pace, and updating a full certification is a much bigger job than shipping a new standalone lesson.
Chad's take: it depends on the trade.
Some industries don't change much (his words: "teeth are teeth"). Marketing and ops aren't one of those. Learning is constant. The right move is to keep doing it, with or without the expiration label, because that's where the skills actually live.
“I'm energized by learning personally. My hobby is hobbies. My hobby is learning things and knowing things and teaching people things. A mobile-friendly Academy and a learning week instead of a certification week, that's an exceptional direction.”
The deeper question is for HubSpot. If a certification expires, the underlying content has to keep up. That's a bigger lift than shipping new lessons, and it's worth watching whether HubSpot closes that loop or whether "expired" becomes the kind of stamp humans start ignoring.
The Wishlist: What the Crew Would Ask HubSpot to Add Next
The Academy is in a great spot. It's also one or two product cycles away from being unrecognizable in the best way. The hosts called out a short list of asks while clicking through the home tab live.
- A filter for newest releases, so an admin who lives in the Academy can see what's new the way they'd see new uploads on a YouTube channel they follow
- Permission-aware and seat-aware recommendations, so a sales rep sees what's relevant to a sales seat instead of every admin lesson HubSpot has ever shipped
- Playlist templates, so common roles and journeys (sales rep onboarding, Salesforce to HubSpot migration, Marketing Hub Pro deep dive) become one-click starting points
- A clear surface for live sessions, hugs, and boot camps from the home tab, so anyone who learns better with other humans can find the next live touchpoint without guessing
- Infinite scroll or a "show 50 per page" option, because seeing 16 pages of results triggers more closed tabs than completed lessons
None of these are blockers. They're the gap between "good" and "the learning experience your team will actually adopt without you babysitting it."
Who This Episode Is For (and Who It Is Not For)
If you're a HubSpot super admin who hasn't logged into the Academy since 2024, this episode is for you. The tool changed enough that your mental model is wrong, and your onboarding flow probably needs an update.
If you run an agency or a partner team and you keep getting asked, "What should I learn first?" this episode is for you. Playlists solve that question once.
If you're a marketer, salesperson, or service rep on a seat someone bought you, this episode is for you. Breeze plus the Academy is now the fastest path from "I don't know this tool" to "I just shipped the thing."
This episode is not for you if you're looking for a deep certification syllabus walkthrough or a guide to passing a specific certification exam. The crew zoomed out to the Academy as a system. The individual lessons inside it deserve their own episodes, and HubSpot's instructors do that better than anyone.
What to Do Monday Morning
- Open the new Academy and reset your recommendations. Go to academy.hubspot.com, click into your interest profile, tick the categories that match where you actually live (marketing automation, content management, RevOps, whatever it is), and let the home tab rebuild around you.
- Block five 15-minute slots on your calendar between June 1 and 5. That's World Learning Week. One lesson per day, $3 to charity per lesson. If a full certification fits the topic and you've got the time, run it for $5.
- Build one onboarding playlist this week. Pick the three to five certifications or lessons you wish every new admin took on day one. Save it as a playlist. Duplicate it for the next hire. Share it with the humans you already have on the team.
- Inside any HubSpot tool, ask Breeze for an Academy lesson on the tool you have open right now. Do it once. See what comes back. Then teach your team to do the same thing as their default learning move.
The One Thing
HubSpot Academy is not the same tool it was a year ago. The Breeze handshake is the headline. The new layout is the surface. World Learning Week is the on-ramp. Playlists are the multiplier. Open it. Click around for ten minutes. Then ask Breeze for a lesson on whatever you have open. That single action will reframe how you onboard the next human who lands in your portal.
Educate to execute. Not the other way around. That's the difference between a stack of certifications nobody uses and a team that actually ships.
