The Federal Acquisition Regulation — the rulebook governing how the government buys everything — is undergoing its most significant rewrite in more than forty years. It is called the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, and it is not a proposal. It is happening now, in phases, with real deadlines attached.
The short history: an April 2025 executive order directed agencies to strip the FAR down to statutory requirements and plain language. The first wave of changes took effect through class deviations beginning February 1, 2026. In June, the FAR Council published four batches of proposed rules covering more than twenty FAR parts, with comment windows measured in days, not months. Part 19 — the part governing small business set-asides — is still under review as I write this.
Three changes deserve your immediate attention. The simplified acquisition threshold now sits at $350,000, which means more of the government’s buying happens through faster, less formal procedures — exactly the lane where responsive small firms win. The micro-purchase threshold rose to $15,000, expanding what a cardholder can buy without competition at all. And for contracts awarded after June 30, 2026, the certified cost or pricing data threshold rises to $10 million — a serious reduction in accounting burden for growing firms.
One thing the overhaul does not do: eliminate set-asides. Small business preferences are statutory. They survive.
Here’s my concern. Rule changes of this scale reward the contractors who read them and quietly penalize the ones who don’t. Proposal boilerplate citing renumbered clauses. Compliance matrices referencing provisions that no longer exist. A CO notices, and what a CO notices becomes your reputation.
The discipline is straightforward. Verify every clause reference before it goes out the door. Confirm current requirements with your contracting officer rather than assuming last year’s rules hold. And when a comment window opens on a rule that touches your lane, file a comment — small businesses almost never do, which means the few that do are heard.
The rulebook is changing. Read it before your competitors do.