On Thursday, September 17, at 10 a.m. ET, the U.S.Small Business Administration (SBA) conducted a virtual forum to hear comments from the public regarding the agency’s proposed rules to increase size standards for small businesses and the 2026 revised methodology used to develop the increased small business size standards. The public forum is required by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, which requires SBA to review size standards every five years. The event was filled to capacity, garnering the largest response ever to an SBA Public Comments Forum on Small Business Size Standards.

According to the SBA Office of Advocacy, the Proposed Rule on Small Business Size Standards will create new size standards for 338 industry groups and industries. Key elements include: consolidating standards primarily at the four-digit and five-digit NAICS levels, which will reduce the total number of individual standards from nearly 1,000; adjusting thresholds based on the revised methodology; shifting some industries from receipts-based to employee-based measures; and increasing size standards in general, which will allow more businesses to qualify as small.

The proposed rule seeks to drastically raise size standards, allowing companies with up to $1 billion in revenue or more than 100 employees in certain sectors to qualify for SBA loan programs, small business federal contracting set-asides and preferences, and related benefits. The changes are expected to qualify approximately 110,000 to 114,500 additional firms as small, an increase of roughly 1.8 percent to 2 percent, according to GovCon Intelligence, a resource platform that provides legal, regulatory, and data-driven analysis regarding federal procurement and small business programs.

SBA officials say the changes are aimed at helping smaller firms compete more effectively against larger competitors. And this is the crux of the controversy. Major segments of the contracting community, believe that these newly designated “small businesses” are in reality mid-sized and large firms that will crowd out true small businesses.

In an analysis of the written comments submitted prior to the virtual public forum, GovCon Intelligence found that more than 875 comments had been filed with the SBA regarding the Proposed Rule on Small Business Size Standards, and that 85 percent of the comments oppose SBA’s proposed increases. According to the analysis, that figure breaks down to 59 percent that are opposed entirely to the increases, and 27 percent who oppose the changes but support some sort of updates to the size standards -- just not the huge increases SBA has proposed.

This widespread opposition to the increases continues to grow. The GovCon Intelligence analysis predicts that public comments to the 2026 SBA Proposed Size Standards will be historic, noting that public comments to previous SBA Size Standard Changes were filed in the last few days of the comment period. According to the analysis, SBA received more than 1,100 comments to the last round of Proposed Size Standards, in 2020.

With nearly 1,000 comments already filed for the 2026 Size Standard Proposal, public response is on pace to be not only the largest ever, but without a doubt, the most controversial.

The recently published proposed rules are titled Small Business Size Standards: Revised Size Standards Methodology (91 FR 54096, August 20, 2026) and Small Business Size Standards (91 FR 53741,August 20, 2026).

Written comments can be submitted electronically or by mail any time before September 22, 2026.

Send by mail to: RyanLambert, Associate Administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Government Contracting and Business Development; by email to: GCBDregs@sba.gov, or submit electronically at www.regulations.gov by identifying ‘‘RIN 3245–AI67.” Written and oral comments and testimony will become part of the administrative record for SBA's consideration when developing the final rule.

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