FAR Council Proposes Sweeping Overhaul of Federal Acquisition Regulation Across Twelve Rulemakings

What the rules do

The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council — comprising OFPP, the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA — has issued a series of proposed rules to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) in implementation of Executive Order 14275, "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement," signed April 15, 2025. The FAR Council is issuing twelve proposed rules that collectively will streamline the FAR in its entirety. The four rules published simultaneously propose revisions to FAR parts 1, 2, 4, 33, 39, 40, 52, and 53; parts 5, 24, 29, and 52; parts 3 and 49; and parts 6, 7, 10, 18, 26, 37, 41, and 52.

Background and rationale

According to the E.O., the FAR has evolved from its original purpose — to establish uniform procedures across executive departments and agencies — into an excessive and overcomplicated regulatory framework and bureaucracy. While meant to "deliver, on a timely basis, the best value product or service to the customer, while maintaining the public's trust and fulfilling public policy objectives," the FAR has become an expensive barrier to achieving those objectives. The E.O. therefore directed the FAR Council and OMB to create an agile, effective, and efficient regulation that contains only provisions required by statute or essential to sound procurement.

Mechanism: the two-phase overhaul

To implement E.O. 14275, OMB issued Memorandum M-25-26, "Overhauling the Federal Acquisition Regulation," which announced the "Revolutionary FAR Overhaul" (RFO) and created a roadmap for producing simpler regulations aligned to statute, rewritten in plain language, and including nonstatutory requirements that are necessary to conducting a sound procurement. OMB Memorandum M-25-26 directed the FAR Council to complete the regulatory overhaul in two phases, each with robust public input. The FAR Council conducted its phase one effort in fiscal year 2025 by issuing model class deviations to replace each part in the FAR until such time as formal rulemaking occurred. The current proposed rules constitute the FAR Council's phase two effort to obtain public comment through formal rulemaking.

Cross-cutting changes in every rule

Each of the four proposed rules shares a common set of structural reforms. All rules generally reorganize FAR parts into phases of acquisition and simplify the text into plain language, including changes to active voice, edits to improve readability, and reorganization to present information more logically — consistent with the Federal plain language guidelines as directed by the Plain Writing Act of 2010. The documents state that none of the plain language edits are intended to change existing FAR requirements. Each rule also proposes to standardize prescriptions for provisions and clauses to provide better clarity around their applicability, including whether they apply to commercial products and services. Additionally, each rule proposes to replace the use of the term "shall" with "must" or "will," as appropriate, throughout the FAR text, provisions, and clauses.

Non-statutory requirements

Section 4 of E.O. 14275 required amendments to the FAR to ensure it contains only provisions that are required by statute or that are otherwise necessary to support simplicity and usability, strengthen the efficacy of the procurement system, or protect economic or national security. The FAR Council reviewed all non-statutory requirements to determine if they are still relevant and essential to sound procurement in today's contracting environment based on those criteria.

The documents explain that the significant reduction of unnecessary mandates is intended to clarify and reinforce the contracting officer's discretion to determine the best way to apply policies and practices. The newly established nonregulatory guidance — described as inspired by acquisition innovation advocates, category managers, other experienced practitioners, and many years of feedback from the contractor community — is expected to facilitate contracting officers' use of their discretion more efficiently and effectively to make smarter buying decisions. This new vision, the memorandum states, represents a paradigm shift where over-engineered regulations designed for paperwork and compliance are replaced with streamlined regulations focused on core stewardship principles, proven buying strategies, critical thinking, market awareness (including to expand awareness of goods, products, and materials offered in the United States), and risk literacy to enhance workforce problem-solving.

What to watch

All four proposed rules share a single public comment deadline: interested parties must submit written comments to the Regulatory Secretariat Division on or before July 23, 2026, to be considered in the formation of the final rules.