The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council opened the formal rewrite of the FAR (the rulebook governing most federal purchasing) on June 23, 2026, publishing the first four of twelve proposed overhaul rules in the Federal Register under Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement. The public comment window on the first four closed July 23, 2026.
What do the first proposed rules cover?
The first batch touches the skeleton of the regulation. FAR Case 2026-001 proposes revisions to FAR parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40, 52, and 53, covering the framework of the regulation, definitions, contracting forms, and the clauses that carry the rules into every contract. Its companion, FAR Case 2026-002, covers parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37, and 41 — including part 6, which governs competition requirements, and part 37, which covers service contracting.
The issuing bodies are the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA, collectively the FAR Council, per the Federal Register notice for FAR Case 2026-001. Both notices carry the same architecture: twelve proposed rules that collectively will streamline the FAR in its entirety.
Both notices state that the rules implement an executive order that "directs the elimination of excessive acquisition regulations to stop the inefficient use of American taxpayer dollars." The stated method is organizational — reorganizing FAR parts into phases of acquisition and simplifying the text into plain language where possible, rather than changing statutory requirements, which the rulemaking cannot do.
What is the overhaul actually trying to do?
The initiative traces to Executive Order 14275 and the push to return the FAR to its "statutory roots" — keeping only what federal law requires and cutting non-statutory rules accumulated over decades. For contracting officers at defense and civilian agencies, the practical consequence would be a restructured regulation whose parts map to acquisition phases rather than the historical layering of repeated amendments.
The scale is unusual. A full rewrite of the FAR has not been attempted in the regulation's modern history, and doing it through twelve coordinated proposed rules means agencies must track which parts of the regulation are stable, which are in proposal, and which are governed in the meantime by class deviations already issued across the government. The notice for FAR Case 2026-002 confirms the same twelve-rule structure and the same comment deadline of July 23, 2026.
What happens next in the process?
With the comment period for the first four rules closed, the council is now in the review phase before final rules are issued. The remaining proposed rules in the twelve-rule sequence were still pending as of August 12, 2026, and the council has not published a schedule for the final versions. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, each final rule must respond to public comments before it takes effect.
For agencies and vendors, the open question is how quickly the model class deviations already in day-to-day use converge with the formal rule text. Where a deviation and a final rule diverge, contracting officers will need updated guidance before the rewritten FAR becomes operational, and contracts awarded under the old text remain governed by the clauses in place when they were signed.
