The presented article discusses the issue of authenticity in testing Polish as a foreign language through a certificate exam. The pursuit of authenticity can manifest both in the general concept of the exam sheet (in its layout and structure), as well as in tasks testing individual skills. When testing reading comprehension, the authenticity requirement can be met by appropriate use of texts from different sources in the examination tasks. These can be both original texts that were created for purposes other than examination, and prepared texts (written specifically for the certification test by the authors of the tasks).