The Federal Acquisition Regulation is jointly prepared, issued, and maintained by three principals: the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator of General Services (GSA), and the Administrator of NASA. That three-agency structure — informally called the FAR Council — means no single department can unilaterally rewrite the rules governing your contracts. Changes to the FAR follow a defined, legally prescribed process with mandated comment periods, multi-agency review, and regulatory clearance. Understanding how that process works gives contractors an edge: you can comment on proposed rules before they take effect, anticipate what is coming, and avoid being caught flat-footed when a new requirement hits your next solicitation.

What It Is

The FAR is codified at Title 48, Chapter 1 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Below it sits a stack of agency-specific supplements — more than twenty in total. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) is the most consequential for defense contractors. Below DFARS sit service-level supplements: AFARS for Army, DAFFARS for Air Force and Space Force, NMCARS for Navy and Marine Corps, plus specialized supplements for DLA and SOCOM.

Two internal working bodies manage revisions. The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council (CAAC), chaired by GSA, draws representatives from fourteen civilian departments — Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, HHS, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and others — plus EPA, NASA, SBA, and USAID. The Defense Acquisition Regulations (DAR) Council is led by a DOD representative and includes the military departments and major Defense agencies. Both councils must agree before any FAR change advances. DFARS changes run through the DAR Council, which also maintains the DFARS Procedures, Guidance, and Information (PGI), a non-regulatory companion document. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), inside OMB, coordinates oversight across the system.

How It Works

FAR rulemaking follows the Administrative Procedure Act's notice-and-comment process, moving through several defined action types.

An Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) is optional — agencies publish one when they need public input before committing to a regulatory approach. ANPRMs solicit data, alternative frameworks, and stakeholder perspectives. Not every rulemaking includes one; they are most common for complex or contested topics.

A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is the core step. The FAR Council publishes proposed regulatory text in the Federal Register along with the legal authority, supporting reasoning, and a public comment deadline. For significant revisions — those that alter the substantive meaning of existing coverage and have notable cost or administrative effects on contractors — publication is mandatory. The minimum public comment period for FAR cases is 30 days; the standard expectation under FAR Part 1, Subpart 1.5 is at least 60 days. Complex rules routinely receive 90 days or more.

After the comment period closes, the councils review all submissions, must address significant comments in the rule's preamble, and publish a Final Rule codified in the CFR. Full notice-and-comment rulemaking involves multiple rounds of council review, agency approval, OFPP and OIRA clearance, public comment, and final publication — a process that can run a year or more for complex rules. FAR cases follow a broadly comparable path through the joint CAAC/DAR Council process, and contested rules run considerably longer.

Two expedited mechanisms exist for urgent situations. An interim rule takes effect immediately and simultaneously opens a 30-day public comment window — permissible only when urgent and compelling circumstances make the standard process impracticable. A direct final rule bypasses the proposed rule phase, reserved for situations where the agency expects no significant adverse comments. A companion proposed rule is typically published simultaneously as a fallback. If substantial opposition arrives, the direct final rule is withdrawn and the standard NPRM process continues.

Class deviations operate outside the formal rulemaking track. An authorized agency official can approve a written deviation from FAR or DFARS requirements for a defined class of contracts or contracting actions, with no Federal Register notice-and-comment process required. For civilian agencies, consultation with the CAAC chairperson is required unless urgency prevents it. Class deviations remain operative until the underlying FAR or DFARS text is formally revised to incorporate the change.

The DFARS overhaul begun in December 2025 used exactly this mechanism: the DAR Council issued class deviations covering 31 DFARS Parts in successive waves through January 2026, with formal notice-and-comment rulemaking to follow. The FAR-level Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) deployed the same pattern at government-wide scale, directing agencies to adopt revised text via deviations before formal rulemaking concluded.

What It Means for Contractors

Comment periods are not formalities. The FAR Council is legally required to read and respond to every significant public comment before a final rule takes effect. Contractors who submit substantive, data-backed comments — on cost impacts, operational feasibility, or unintended consequences — influence final rule text more often than practitioners assume. The APA does not require agencies to adopt what commenters ask, but it does require them to consider and respond to substantive input. Comments grounded in operational specifics — actual clause language, demonstrated compliance costs, concrete ambiguities — are harder to dismiss than abstract policy objections. Law firms and trade associations file routinely; most primes and subcontractors do not. That gap is an opportunity.

Tracking open cases requires no subscription or special access. The Office of the Secretary of Defense publishes a running list of open FAR cases and a parallel list for DFARS cases, both updated regularly and available on the Defense Acquisition Regulations System pages at acq.osd.mil. For individual case docket materials — supporting documents, comment submissions, and agency analysis — search the case number at regulations.gov.

On June 23, 2026, the FAR Council published four proposed rules in the Federal Register covering 20 FAR Parts — FAR Cases 2026-001, 2026-002, 2026-005, and 2026-007. The comment deadline is July 23, 2026. That 30-day window is shorter than the standard 60-day expectation; final rules are widely anticipated to take effect within calendar year 2026. The council plans twelve proposed rules total to revise all FAR Parts, with heavily used parts including 8, 12, 16, and 19 still to come. The proposed rules go beyond the class deviation language already in force — Part 40, for example, addresses Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) requirements.

If any Part currently under revision governs clauses in your active contracts, the comment window is short. Pull the proposed rule text, map it against your contract terms, and file a comment if you identify a compliance problem or an ambiguity that will cost you money.

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