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Wisconsin Concealed Carry Permit

Wisconsin requires a License to Carry a Concealed Weapon to carry. It is shall-issue, the minimum age is 21, and training is required.

Requirements at a glance

Permit name License to Carry a Concealed Weapon
Issuing authority Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement Services (Firearms Unit)
System shall-issue
Minimum age 21 — Wis. Stat. § 175.60(3)(a) requires the department to deny a license if "the individual is less than 21 years of age." Re-verified 2026-09-15 against the statute and against the official application form DJ-LE-287 (rev. 05/16/23), whose License Requirements checklist opens with "Applicant is at least 21 years of age." There is no 18-20 military or other exception for the Wisconsin CCW license. Out-of-state licensees carrying in Wisconsin must also be at least 21 (Wisconsin DOJ out-of-state permit recognition page). Open carry, which requires no license, is generally available at 18.
Training required Yes
State fee $40 initial / $22 renewal — the state's own charge, not the total
Valid for 5 years
Processing time Within 21 days
Fingerprints Not required
Non-resident permit Not available

What it actually costs

The state fee is rarely the whole bill. Fingerprinting is usually charged by a private vendor, training is bought from an instructor, and several states add photographs, notarisation or other requirements on top.

State fee $40
Training course $75–$250 (private instructor)
Realistic total $115–$290

Wisconsin's $40 already contains the background check. The official application form DJ-LE-287 itemizes it verbatim: 'This amount includes the application fee of $30 and the background check fee of $10.' Statutory and rule basis: § 175.60(7)(c) caps the license portion at $37 and Wis. Admin. Code § Jus 17.12(1) sets it at $30; § 175.60(7)(d) adds the check fee, which § 175.35(2i) sets at $10. Renewal is $22 ($12 + $10). No fingerprints and no photograph are required. Training is required of first-time applicants, but § 175.60(4)(a) sets no hour count and the DOJ instructor FAQ answers 'Is there a minimum hour requirement? No.' — the DOJ's four-hour model curriculum is guidance offered to instructors, not a requirement imposed on applicants. Training must be instructor-led and face-to-face; online-only courses do not count, which is why the low end of the training range reflects an in-person class rather than a cheap web course.

Per the Wisconsin DOJ CCW License Management page and the official application form DJ-LE-287 (rev. 05/16/23), both re-verified 2026-09-15: the new-license fee is $40, and the form states the breakdown verbatim — 'The fee is $40 and is non-refundable. This amount includes the application fee of $30 and the background check fee of $10.' Renewal is $22 ($12 license + $10 background check). Statutory basis: Wis. Stat. § 175.60(7)(c) sets a license fee 'as determined by the department by rule, that is equal to the cost of issuing the license but does not exceed $37,' plus § 175.60(7)(d), 'a fee for a background check that is equal to the fee charged under s. 175.35(2i).' Wis. Stat. § 175.35(2i) sets that check fee at $10. Wis. Admin. Code § Jus 17.12(1) fixes the license fee at $30 and § Jus 17.12(3) fixes the replacement/renewal license fee at $12. NOTE A RULE/PRACTICE DISCREPANCY: § Jus 17.12(2) reads 'The fee for any background check conducted by the department pursuant to s. Jus 17.04(1)(f) or 17.07(5)(b) shall be $13,' but DOJ publishes and charges $10, consistent with the § 175.60(7)(d) cross-reference to § 175.35(2i). The amounts you actually pay are $40 new and $22 renewal. SECONDARY FEES from the DOJ CCW Forms page (verified 2026-09-15): replacement of a lost, stolen, or damaged license card — $12 (form DJ-LE-285); address change — free, or $12 if you want a new license card issued (form DJ-LE-285); name change — $22 total, itemized on the page as a $10 background check plus a $12 new license (form DJ-LE-293); denial appeal (form DJ-LE-291) — no charge. A returned check adds a $20 insufficient-funds fee under Wis. Stat. § 20.905(2).

How to apply

  1. Confirm eligibility: at least 21, a Wisconsin resident as shown by a current and valid Wisconsin driver license or ID card (or active military stationed in Wisconsin), and not prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law or by court order.
  2. Complete an accepted instructor-led firearms training course, or gather documentation of one of the six qualifying training proofs listed by Wisconsin DOJ. Online-only courses do not qualify (Wis. Admin. Code § Jus 17.03(8)).
  3. Apply online through the Wisconsin DOJ CCW License Website at https://concealedcarry.doj.wi.gov/ccwonline/index.html, or mail the paper application (form DJ-LE-287) from the DOJ CCW Forms page to Wisconsin Department of Justice, ATTN: Firearms Unit, P.O. Box 7130, Madison, WI 53707-7130.
  4. Submit with the application: the completed form bearing three required original signatures (no photocopies), your current Wisconsin residential mailing address, your Wisconsin driver license or ID card number, a statement that the information is true and complete, and acceptable proof of training. No photograph and no fingerprints are required.
  5. Pay the $40 new-license fee — $30 application fee plus $10 background-check fee — by check or money order payable to 'Wisconsin Department of Justice' if applying by mail. Do not send cash. Incomplete applications are returned with the payment.
  6. Wisconsin DOJ runs the firearms eligibility background check, including a NICS search; new applications and renewals are processed within 21 days.
  7. Receive the license document by mail. The Wisconsin license carries no photograph, so you must carry the license document together with photographic identification whenever carrying concealed (Wis. Stat. § 175.60(2g)).
  8. Renew before the 5-year expiration for $22; no additional training is required at renewal.

Apply on the official Wisconsin site

What disqualifies you

Where to get the required training

Wisconsin does not publish a central list of certified instructors. Confirm directly with Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement Services (Firearms Unit) that a course will be accepted before you pay for it.

Training providers in Wisconsin

Businesses in our directory that offer firearms training. These are not state-verified as certified permit instructors — check against the official list above, or ask the provider directly.

All firearms training in Wisconsin →

Reciprocity

Carrying into Wisconsin

Wisconsin recognizes permits from 46 other jurisdictions.

Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming

31 jurisdictions honor a Wisconsin permit

Derived from what each of those states officially publishes.

Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming

Official Wisconsin reciprocity page Full reciprocity matrix →

Building your own in Wisconsin

Build for personal use
Allowed
Serial number required
No

Wisconsin has no state law prohibiting a non-prohibited adult from building a firearm for personal use, and no state law requiring a serial number, state registration, or state marking on a self-made firearm. Re-verified 2026-09-15 by re-reading the complete official section index of Wis. Stat. ch. 941 on docs.legis.wisconsin.gov. Subchapter III (Weapons) runs: 941.20 Endangering safety by use of dangerous weapon; 941.21 Disarming an officer; 941.23 Carrying concealed weapon; 941.231 Carrying a concealed knife; 941.235 Carrying firearm in public building; 941.237 Carrying handgun where alcohol beverages may be sold and consumed; 941.25 Manufacturer to register machine guns; 941.26 Machine guns and other weapons; use in certain cases; penalty; 941.28 Possession of short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle; 941.29 Possession of a firearm; 941.2905 Straw purchasing of firearms; 941.291 Possession of body armor; 941.292 Possession of a weaponized drone; 941.295 Possession of electric weapon; 941.296 Use or possession of a handgun and an armor-piercing bullet during crime; 941.2965 Restrictions on use of facsimile firearms; 941.297 Sale or distribution of imitation firearms; 941.298 Firearm silencers; 941.299 Restrictions on the use of laser pointers. None addresses home manufacture, unserialized firearms, 'ghost guns', undetectable firearms, or unfinished frames/receivers. NEAREST WISCONSIN PROVISION: Wis. Stat. § 943.37(3) (Alteration of property identification marks) makes it a Class A misdemeanor, with intent to prevent identification of the property, to alter or remove 'any manufacturer's identification number on personal property' or to possess personal property knowing the number has been altered or removed. A firearm is personal property, so defacing an existing serial number is a Wisconsin crime — but the section creates no obligation to apply a serial number to a firearm that never had one. LEGISLATIVE HISTORY: bills to require serialization and to ban undetectable firearms have been introduced repeatedly (e.g. 2021 Assembly Bill 469, which would have made possession of an unserialized frame or receiver a Class I felony) and none has been enacted. IMPORTANT CAVEATS: (1) This remains a conclusion drawn from the absence of a statute — no Wisconsin agency publishes a page saying home manufacture is lawful. (2) FEDERAL law still fully applies: the Undetectable Firearms Act (18 U.S.C. § 922(p)), the National Firearms Act for short-barreled or automatic weapons, the prohibition on manufacturing for sale or distribution without an FFL, and ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F. (3) A person prohibited from possessing a firearm under Wis. Stat. § 941.29 may not build one either. (4) Wisconsin's firearms preemption statute, Wis. Stat. § 66.0409, generally bars local governments from imposing stricter firearm regulation than the state.

No Wisconsin statute on point; Wis. Stat. ch. 941, subch. III (Weapons) contains no self-manufacture, serialization, or unfinished frame/receiver provision. Wis. Stat. § 943.37(3) separately criminalizes altering or removing an existing manufacturer's identification number, but imposes no duty to serialize.

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

Statutes

What we could not confirm

  • PUERTO RICO / VALIDATION CONFLICT: Wisconsin DOJ's official recognition page expressly lists Puerto Rico ('regular license only. Expedited licenses do not qualify for recognition in Wisconsin.'). PR is a legitimate USPS two-letter code, but a prior validation run rejected it as an invalid postal code, so it has been removed from reciprocity.honors and documented in reciprocity.notes instead. The omission is a schema accommodation, NOT a statement that Wisconsin declines to recognize Puerto Rico licenses. If the schema is widened to accept territories, PR should be added back.
  • CONDITIONAL RECOGNITION IS FLATTENED: the honors array cannot express partial recognition. FL and VA are recognized ONLY via their NON-RESIDENT licenses (their resident licenses are expressly NOT recognized), and ID, MO, and WV exclude emergency/provisional licenses. A reader relying on the bare array could wrongly conclude that a Florida or Virginia RESIDENT license is valid in Wisconsin. It is not. See reciprocity.notes before rendering.
  • The DOJ reciprocity page still carries no visible 'last updated' date, so I cannot state when Wisconsin last refreshed its recognition list. What I can state: the list I read on 2026-09-15 is identical to the one read on 2026-08-10, and Wis. Admin. Code § Jus 17.13 obliges DOJ to maintain the published list continuously rather than on a fixed schedule. Reciprocity lists still change without notice; re-verify before publishing.
  • FEE RULE VS FEE CHARGED: Wis. Admin. Code § Jus 17.12(2) states the background-check fee 'shall be $13,' but Wisconsin DOJ publishes and its official application form itemizes $10 ($30 + $10 = the $40 total), which matches Wis. Stat. § 175.60(7)(d)'s cross-reference to the $10 fee in § 175.35(2i). The amounts an applicant actually pays are $40 new and $22 renewal; the $13 figure in the rule appears to be stale or superseded, but I found no DOJ or Legislative Reference Bureau notice explaining the difference. If a reader is quoted $43, that is the discrepancy to raise.
  • HOME MANUFACTURE IS STILL PARTLY AN ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE. On 2026-09-15 I re-read the complete official section index of Wis. Stat. ch. 941 (all four subchapters) and confirmed no self-manufacture, serialization, undetectable-firearm, or unfinished frame/receiver provision, and I located the nearest adjacent provision, Wis. Stat. § 943.37(3) on defacing a manufacturer's identification number. I did not exhaustively search every remaining Wisconsin chapter or the full administrative code, and no Wisconsin agency publishes an affirmative statement on the subject. Treat selfManufactureAllowed/serialRequired as 'no state law found' rather than 'officially confirmed lawful.' Federal law applies independently.
  • The DOJ instructor FAQ that supplies the primary-source answers on minimum hours, live fire, and the absence of an instructor registry is stamped 'Revision: 02/07/2017' and its internal links point at the retired doj.state.wi.us domain (which now 302-redirects to the wisdoj.gov home page). Its substantive answers are consistent with the current text of Wis. Stat. § 175.60(4) and Wis. Admin. Code ch. Jus 17 that I read today, but it is DOJ's most recent published guidance on instructor eligibility and it is nine years old.
  • The ATF compilation 'State Laws and Published Ordinances — Wisconsin' returned HTTP 403 to my fetch, so I could not use it as an independent cross-check of the complete set of Wisconsin firearms statutes. The chapter 941 index and § 943.37 were read directly on docs.legis.wisconsin.gov instead.

Sources