Regulatory briefingUpdated 31 July 2026
The FAR is being rewritten. Here is what changes for a small contractor.
Executive Order 14275 set off the largest rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation in more than forty years. Four proposed rules covering twenty FAR parts published on 23 June 2026, and the FAR Council intends to finalize the full set of twelve by the end of the year. Several changes are already in force. This page tracks what actually changed, what it means if you sell to the federal government, and what to do about it.
Every claim below links to its primary source. Nothing here is legal advicefor that, talk to your contracts counsel or your contracting officer.
The four changes that matter most
1. The dollar thresholds went up
Effective 1 October 2025, the micro-purchase threshold rose from $10,000 to $15,000, the simplified acquisition threshold from $250,000 to $350,000, and simplified procedures for commercial items from $7.5 million to $9 million.
Why it matters: more federal spending now flows through simplified procedures. Those buys move faster, post with shorter response windows, and attract less attention than a full solicitation. The window between a requirement appearing and an award being made gets shorter, so a contractor who checks in weekly will miss things a contractor who is notified will catch.
2. FAR Part 10 lost its small business language
Part 10 governs market research, the work an agency does to understand what is available before it buys. The revised text removes the references to small business, bundling, consolidation, and the Rule of Two, and cuts the six triggers that required market research down to three.
Why it matters: this is the most consequential change on this page and the least discussed. Agencies now have materially less obligation to go looking for small businesses before they buy. If your strategy has been to register in SAM, keep your capability statement current, and wait to be found, that strategy just got weaker. Finding the work yourself moved from an advantage to a requirement.
3. The Rule of Two was reworked, and task orders escaped it
The Rule of Two still exists in FAR Part 19, and it now applies to all small businesses: a contracting officer must consider a general small business set-aside before moving to the socioeconomic programs. Two other changes cut the other way. The Rule of Two does not apply to individual orders placed under multiple-award contracts, and that set-aside decision cannot be protested. Separately, small businesses no longer re-represent their size when competing for task orders; size is fixed at the time the master contract was awarded.
Why it matters: a large and growing share of federal work is placed as orders under vehicles that already exist. That work is now largely outside both the Rule of Two and the protest process. Knowing which vehicles serve your market, and who holds them, matters more than it did a year ago.
4. Clause numbers are being reorganized
The FAR clause structure is being renumbered as part of the rewrite, and new solicitations are already citing the updated structure.
Why it matters: this is the change most likely to cost you a bid on a technicality. Proposal boilerplate, compliance matrices, and representations that cite clause numbers from a template can now be citing something that has moved. Check clause references against the solicitation in front of you rather than against your last proposal.
What is still uncertain
It is worth being precise about status, because a lot of commentary is not. The four rules published on 23 June 2026 are proposed rules; their comment period closed on 23 July 2026 and they are not final. At the same time, many agencies are already operating under class deviations that implement the overhauled text, so the practical rules on a given procurement may already have changed even where the FAR itself has not. The FAR Council has said it intends to finalize everything by the end of 2026, which is an ambitious schedule for twelve rules.
What to do now
- Audit your proposal templates for clause references. This is the cheapest, highest-value hour you can spend on this. Anything citing a FAR clause number should be verified against a current solicitation.
- Stop waiting to be found. With the small-business language out of Part 10, forecasts, sources-sought notices, and industry days matter more, because they are where you can still get in front of a requirement early.
- Learn the vehicles in your market. Work moving through orders under existing multiple-award contracts is not reachable by watching open solicitations.
- Watch the comment windows. The remaining proposed rules will publish with comment periods of roughly thirty to sixty days. That is your only formal chance to tell the FAR Council what a rule does to a business your size.
How FedFinder tracks this
FAR Watch, live in the product now, reads the Federal Register for every rule and proposed rule amending Title 48 of the CFR. That covers the FAR itself plus the DFARS, the GSAR, and the Cost Accounting Standards. Each one is stored with the FAR parts it touches, its comment deadline, and its effective date, and matched against the NAICS codes and set-asides on your account, so you see the changes that reach your work rather than all of them.
FedFinder is a private commercial service and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. All regulatory data on this page comes from public sources.
Sources
- Federal Register: Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, Parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40, 53
- Federal Register: Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, Parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37, 41
- Federal Register: Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, Parts 5, 24, 29
- Acquisition.gov: Revolutionary FAR Overhaul hub and model deviation text
- Acquisition.gov: FAR Part 19 deviation guide
Related reading
See which of these reach your NAICS codes
FAR Watch matches every published change against your codes and set-asides, with the comment deadline and effective date attached. Included on every plan.