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The September 2026 FAR overhaul rules: what changes for small businesses

Updated September 2026

The rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation took its biggest step since June. Four proposed rules published in the Federal Register on September 18, 2026 cover commercial buying, simplified acquisitions, negotiated proposals, contract types, contractor qualifications, data rights and construction. That is the part of the FAR a small contractor actually meets in a solicitation. These are proposals, not law: you can still tell the FAR Council what would help or hurt a small firm, and the deadline is October 19.

What was published on September 18, 2026

The FAR Council is the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) together with DoD, GSA and NASA. It published four rules on the same day, each with its own case number and docket:

• FAR Case 2026-003, parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44 and 51: required sources, commercial buying, simplified acquisitions and negotiated proposals. 91 FR 59406.
• FAR Case 2026-006, parts 16, 17 and 35: contract types, options, multiyear and research contracts. 91 FR 59476.
• FAR Case 2026-011, parts 9, 27 and 47: contractor qualifications, patents and data rights, transportation. 91 FR 59584.
• FAR Case 2026-010, parts 14, 28 and 36: sealed bidding, bonds and insurance, construction. 91 FR 59534.

All four carry the same comment deadline, October 19, 2026. Each also rewrites the matching clauses in part 52, replaces "shall" with "must" or "will", and states for every clause whether it applies to commercial products, commercial services and commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) items. That last change sounds dull. For a small seller it is one of the most useful, because today many prescriptions leave the question to the contracting officer.

Where this fits in the overhaul

The overhaul comes from Executive Order 14275, "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement," signed April 15, 2025. Phase one ran in fiscal year 2025, when the FAR Council issued model class deviations to replace each FAR part ahead of formal rulemaking. Phase two is the formal rulemaking with public comment, split into twelve proposed rules.

The first four came out on June 23, 2026 and covered parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40 and 53; parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37 and 41; parts 5, 24 and 29; and parts 3 and 49. Their comment period closed on July 23, 2026. With the September batch, eight of the twelve are now out. Two parts a small business cares about most are in neither batch: part 19, which holds the small business programs and set-aside rules, and part 32, which covers payments. The September preamble says FAST payment procedures will be handled in the part 32 rulemaking.

Our earlier page on the FAR overhaul without the jargon covers the general shape. This page is about what the September text proposes. GSA's Revolutionary FAR Overhaul page on acquisition.gov keeps the list of overhauled parts, the agency deviations already in use, and a nonregulatory "FAR Companion" guide.

How commercial buying would change

Part 12 gets the biggest rebuild. The FAR Council wants it to become a "one-stop shop" for commercial purchases, so it pulls in procedures that now sit in parts 5 and 13.

• Simplified procedures up to $9 million. The statutory authority to use simplified procedures for commercial products and services up to $9 million, or $15 million for certain emergencies and major disasters, moves into part 12 and is written throughout it. The preamble says plainly that contracting officers should not use part 14 or 15 procedures for commercial buys in that range.
• Micro-purchases and simplified buys move. Micro-purchase procedures would move to a new subpart 12.4, and procedures for purchases at or below the simplified acquisition threshold would sit at 12.201-1. The threshold itself is $350,000 today; our page on the simplified acquisition threshold explains what it does.
• Posting on SAM.gov. The default for a commercial buy would be a "combined synopsis/solicitation" posted at SAM.gov, the Governmentwide point of entry, including set-aside information. At or below the threshold a contracting officer could post only a presolicitation notice and ask at least three sources for quotes, "which should include two new sources, whenever practicable." If you are new, that phrase is worth watching.
• Short evaluation criteria. The rule keeps language that evaluation factors generally need not be more detailed than technical, price and past performance.

Part 13 would shrink to cover only noncommercial purchases at or below the threshold, pointing back to part 12 wherever the procedure is the same. For a small firm selling ordinary products or services, the practical message is that most of your federal buyers' playbook would live in one part. Opportunities still show up in the same place, which our guide to finding federal contract opportunities walks through.

What happens to 52.212-3 and your SAM.gov reps

This is the change most likely to raise questions. Today, the provision at FAR 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications, lets a commercial offeror complete only one short paragraph if it has done its annual representations electronically in SAM.gov. The companion clause 52.212-5 lists the statutory and executive order clauses that may apply. The September rule proposes to remove both.

The FAR Council's reasoning is that the two documents are incomplete lists that push the work of figuring out which requirements apply onto the offeror. Instead, the contracting officer, or an agency's clause logic system, would include only what each clause's prescription says applies to commercial acquisitions. An agency that wanted to add a clause not prescribed for commercial work would need a formal deviation under part 1. The preamble says this would "substantially reduce the number of provisions and clauses" in commercial solicitations and would shift the burden of deciding which ones apply "from the offeror or contractor to the Government."

What the preamble does not do is describe new SAM.gov screens. Representations themselves are not going away: individual provisions keep their own representations, and the SAM.gov registration rules sit in FAR part 4, which was in the June batch. So do not delete or ignore anything in your registration. Keep your representations and certifications in SAM.gov accurate, especially size by NAICS code, and renew on time. If the final rule changes what SAM.gov asks, GSA will say so on sam.gov, and it will still be free.

How proposals would be evaluated and negotiated

Part 15 governs negotiated contracts, the ones with a request for proposals, evaluation factors and sometimes a competitive range. The proposed changes aim at a problem most small bidders have felt: agencies avoid talking to offerors because any exchange might count as "discussions" and invite a protest.

• Negotiations instead of discussions. Contracting officers would still have to address each competitive-range offeror's deficiencies and significant weaknesses, but could hold more than one negotiation with one offeror without repeating it with everyone else, and bargain on price, intellectual property and other terms.
• A plainer "deficiency." A deficiency would simply be part of a proposal that does not conform to a material term of the solicitation. A material term is one that affects price, quantity, quality or delivery, or a prerequisite the solicitation requires at submission.
• More clarifications. Clarifications could happen at any time before award and could cover ambiguities, perceived deficiencies or mistakes, but would not let you revise the proposal or fix a material omission. They would stay optional.
• Adverse past performance. Today a contracting officer must give you a chance to answer adverse past performance you have not seen before excluding you from the competitive range. Under the proposal they could do so as a clarification but "would no longer" be required to as a matter of policy. If you are building a record, our page on winning without past performance covers how agencies weigh it.
• Late proposals. A contracting officer could accept a late proposal when it is in the Government's best interest and would not unduly delay award, replacing today's narrow exceptions. Do not plan around it; submit on time.
• A wider competitive range and a new method. The competitive range would hold the proposals "best suited for further negotiation," not only the highest rated. The rule also formalizes "highest technically rated with a fair and reasonable price," where the agency picks the best technical proposal and awards if its price is fair, and phased evaluations, also called down-selects.

Contract types, orders and options

The part 16 rule builds in Executive Order 14402 of April 30, 2026, which makes fixed-price contracts with performance-based considerations the default. Using any other contract type would need a written justification signed by the agency head. A new alternate to provision 52.216-1 would let offerors propose a different contract type. For small firms without an approved cost accounting system, a fixed-price default is often easier to work with, though it moves more cost risk onto you.

Several changes matter if you hold, or want, a spot on a multiple-award contract:

• Rules for on-ramps and off-ramps, adding and removing contractors to keep the pool current.
• Authority to set up blanket purchase agreements under multiple-award contracts, similar to the schedules.
• A brief explanation on request when you lose a task or delivery order above the simplified acquisition threshold but not above $7.5 million, plus a notice that you lost. This implements section 874 of the fiscal year 2020 defense authorization act. Above $7.5 million the part 15 debriefing rules apply.

The part 17 changes remove the general five-year limit on contract length that is not in statute, allow options for increased quantities of services, and let the Government and a contractor agree to pause an option exercise deadline that falls during a lapse in appropriations, for example until 30 days after operations resume. With funding now set to run out on December 11, 2026, that last point connects to our page on what a shutdown means for your contract. For cost-type contractors, the rule also trims the incurred cost submission in clause 52.216-7, dropping the payroll reconciliation to IRS Form 941.

Contractor qualifications, data rights and construction

The part 9 rule mostly deletes text. Preaward surveys at 9.106 go, as do subpart 9.6 on contractor team arrangements and subpart 9.7 on defense production pools. The preamble calls the teaming text "unnecessary" and says the part 9 revisions do not substantively change policy; nothing in it prohibits teaming. The old FAPIIS name is replaced with "integrity records," which the preamble notes are now accessed in SAM.gov and reported in CPARS. One addition: noncompliance with a new clause implementing Executive Order 14398 on diversity, equity and inclusion activities would become a cause for debarment and suspension.

The part 27 rule replaces the FAR's data rights coverage with text taken from the defense supplement, so civilian and defense agencies would use one system. For Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer awardees, the data protection period would become a single, non-extendable 20 years, after which the Government would get government purpose rights rather than unlimited rights, matching SBA's 2023 policy directive.

For small construction firms, the part 36 rule would remove clause 52.236-1, Performance of Work by the Contractor, which sets a minimum share of work the prime must perform itself. The FAR Council says the clause restricts competition because not every prime performs every scope. It would also drop the clauses requiring full-time on-site direction by an owner or senior officer, the site visit provision, and the preconstruction conference clause, leaving those requirements to each solicitation. Reverse auctions would be barred above the simplified acquisition threshold for complex, specialized or substantial design and construction services. Separately, the June part 2 rule would let construction count as a commercial service in some cases, so part 12 procedures could apply.

Your clause numbers may all change

Every September rule says the FAR Council is considering moving all provisions and clauses into a new part 52 subpart, so a clause now numbered 52.2xx might start with 52.4 instead. The goal is to make it obvious which version of a clause a contract uses. If you keep proposal templates, compliance checklists or subcontract flow-down lists keyed to clause numbers, this would break them. The FAR Council asks for comments on the impact, and a small business that relies on templates is exactly the commenter it says it wants to hear from.

How to comment before October 19

Commenting is free and does not require a lawyer. The "ADDRESSES" section of the part 12 and 15 rule sets out the steps:

1. Go to regulations.gov and search for the docket of the rule you care about. The part 12 and 15 rule is docket FAR-2026-0003; the others are FAR-2026-0006, FAR-2026-0011 and FAR-2026-0010, matching their case numbers.
2. Cite the FAR Case number, such as "FAR Case 2026-003," in the comment and on any attachment, with your name and company name if you want to give them. Anonymous comments are allowed.
3. Be specific. Name the proposed section, say what it would do to a firm your size, and propose wording if you can.
4. Leave out anything confidential. The instructions warn that comments "generally will be posted without change," including business confidential information.
5. Check regulations.gov two to three days later to confirm your comment posted.

The preambles cite 401,196 SAM.gov registrants that were small under at least one of their NAICS codes as of January 2026, and say roughly 45 percent of fiscal year 2025 contract dollars went out without competition or with only one offer. The FAR Council says it wants more small firms bidding. Comments from firms that actually bid are how it finds out whether these changes would help.

What does not change

• SAM.gov is still free. None of the four rules adds a registration fee. Anyone telling you the overhaul means you must buy a new registration or "compliance certificate" is selling something. Our page on SAM.gov registration scams shows how those pitches are built.
• Set-aside rules are not in these rules. Part 19 has not been proposed yet, so the September text does not rewrite small business set-asides or the Rule of Two.
• Current contracts keep their clauses. A proposed rule does not rewrite a contract you already signed. New terms reach existing contracts only through a modification.
• Nothing is final. Some agencies already buy under the phase one deviations, so the clauses in each solicitation are what govern that buy.

This page summarizes four proposed rules as published on September 18, 2026. Final rules can differ. Confirm the current text on acquisition.gov and the requirements in each solicitation before relying on anything here.

Independent information, not legal advice. ZeroGov is not GSA, not the FAR Council, not SAM.gov and not the U.S. government.