What kind of Certifcate and Provisioning Profile is needed for an iOS Apple TestFlight release?

The Apple Technical Note TN2407 has a section titled "Submitting your app for publishing to TestFlight" and in this section Apple says:

TestFlight apps submitted to iTunesConnect need to be signed with an App Store Distribution Profile. TestFlight no longer accepts apps submitted with an Ad Hoc profile.

So the situation is now unambiguous: you need a production certificate for the app, and an App Store distribution provisioning profile.

I believe you need a Production certificate with a Distribution profile for "App Store". I just submit my app which is now in review for external beta testers. The first time I submit the app I was using an Ad Hoc profile as we always did while using the original Testflight. That profile caused the app to be rejected before it even got to the review processes. Once I changed to using an App Store profile it passed into the review process. So, Production cert, Distribution App Store provisioning profile worked for me.

The Apple developer site has some information on beta testing options for ios. It discusses both Ad Hoc and iTunes connect distribution.

You can also check out this tutorial, which goes through the processes using xcode to submit your build for testing.

Hope that helps.

You should use the following types of certificate and provisioning profile:

Certificate:- Production (iOS Distribution)Provisioning Profile:- Distribution (App Store)

You should use an App Store Distribution Provisioning Profile to upload to Apple TestFlight:

When you go through the process of creating the Provisioning Profile, it will filter your Certificates to only allow iOS Distribution certificates.