Massage License Requirements in Colorado
Verified against Office of Massage Therapy Licensure, Division of Professions and Occupations (DORA) · 2026-07-24 · verified by agent
Colorado's 650-hour training requirement is sourced from 3 CCR 722-1 — Rules Regulating Massage Therapists (Office of Massage Therapy Licensure), verified 2026-07-24. Its required exam — MBLEx (Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination) — comes from the same source.
Compiled and verified against primary state-board sources by GetMassageLicense — cite-or-deny, with no invented figures. How we source & verify →
Colorado requires massage therapists to hold a state license issued by the Office of Massage Therapy Licensure within the Division of Professions and Occupations (DORA) — a full practice-act license, not the lighter-touch registration scheme Colorado used before the 2008 law that created this Board. Applicants must complete at least 650 hours of coursework and clinical training at an approved school and pass the MBLEx or an NCBTMB national certification exam. Unusually, Colorado does not require continuing education to renew an active, on-time license — CE is required only when reinstating a license that has lapsed.
Colorado Massage License Requirements
| Licensing Authority | Office of Massage Therapy Licensure, Division of Professions and Occupations (DORA) (DPO) |
| Title | Massage Therapist |
| Training Hours | 650 hours — Schools certified by Colorado's Division of Private Occupational Schools, Colorado Community College System programs, programs accredited by a U.S. Dept. of Education-recognized accrediting agency, approved out-of-state programs, or foreign programs with credential evaluation. Schools holding a valid NCBTMB school code in good standing are deemed to satisfy the requirement automatically. |
| Exam | MBLEx (Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination) (Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB)) Alternatives accepted: NCBTMB National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage (NCETM); NCBTMB National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCETMB); Director-approved alternative examinations |
| Renewal Period | 2 years (all licenses expire December 31 of even-numbered years) |
Fee Breakdown
| No fee amount is published by the source above — left blank deliberately rather than estimated or copied from an unverified aggregator. |
Recommended MBLEx exam prep
Formal prep pays for itself against a $265 retake. These are the resources we point candidates to for the MBLEx (Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination).
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Not required.
Colorado's current rule (3 CCR 722-1) contains no mandatory continuing education requirement to renew an active, on-time license. CE becomes relevant only for reinstatement: 24 hours of CE are required to reinstate a license lapsed 2–5 years, while licenses lapsed more than 5 years require re-examination or another equivalency demonstration.
Licensure by Endorsement
Rule 1.4 allows licensure by endorsement for applicants holding an unrestricted license or registration in good standing in another state or U.S. territory, on a showing of substantially equivalent training — either the current 650-hour education standard, or a documented-practice-hour substitution of 50 hours of credit for each year of 400+ hours of practice.
Sources
Source Notes
Where a source is stale, conflicting, or required a judgment call, we document it here rather than presenting a single confident-sounding number. See our methodology for how these calls are made.
- Colorado's massage-licensing rule authorizes the state to set fees but doesn't publish the specific dollar amounts on its general licensing pages, so we've left the fee fields blank rather than repeat unconfirmed figures you may see on other sites.
Data last verified: 2026-07-24 (verified by: agent) | Source: 3 CCR 722-1 — Rules Regulating Massage Therapists (Office of Massage Therapy Licensure)