Syllabus in force since 1 July 2026
The HSK 3.0 lists, counted from the source
Every word and character the new exam requires, split by level: 11,000 words with official pinyin and English glosses, 3,088 characters with stroke counts, and 1,200 of those marked as the ones you must be able to write by hand.
Why another HSK list
It is the exam that is actually running
Most English lists you will find describe either the HSK 2.0 exam, retired in July 2026, or the 2021 proficiency standard, which is not an exam at all. Those three documents give three different answers for the same level — 600, 2,245 and 1,000 words for HSK 3.
Counted, not copied
The lists were parsed straight out of the official 406-page syllabus PDF. Its ordinary text layer is unusable — the tables are interleaved with a watermark and only 7,900 of the 11,000 entries come out, silently — so the parser works from the coordinates of every word on the page.
It checks itself
Two independently parsed parts of the syllabus have to agree: the set of characters used across all 11,000 words must be exactly the syllabus’s own list of characters to recognise. It matches, 3,088 to 3,088, with nothing left over on either side.
Reading and writing kept apart
The new syllabus separates characters you must recognise from the smaller set you must write by hand, and so do these pages: the handwriting ones are marked in every character grid.
How far each set of characters gets you
A word is readable only if you know all of its characters. Running that over the syllabus gives a number worth knowing before you plan anything:
- HSK 1246 characters→ 884 of the 11,000 words fully readable (8%)
- HSK 2371 characters→ 1,531 of the 11,000 words fully readable (13.9%)
- HSK 3655 characters→ 3,221 of the 11,000 words fully readable (29.3%)
- HSK 41,096 characters→ 5,848 of the 11,000 words fully readable (53.2%)
- HSK 51,527 characters→ 7,855 of the 11,000 words fully readable (71.4%)
- HSK 61,940 characters→ 9,171 of the 11,000 words fully readable (83.4%)
- HSK 7–93,088 characters→ 11,000 of the 11,000 words fully readable (100%)
At 1,096 characters — the HSK 4 set — half the entire syllabus becomes readable. Early on, characters pay off faster than words do, because every new character combines with all the ones already learned.
And a trainer, not just lists
Two decks with six kinds of exercise on every word — cards, sentence building, gap filling, lookalikes and handwriting that refuses a stroke made out of order. The example sentences were translated from the Chinese, not from the Russian originals.
Alongside them: printable practice sheets, the pinyin chart and a tone drill. No account for any of it.
If you read Russian, the full version is here.