SBA Proposes New Size Standards for 338 Industry Groups. Comments Now Close 20 November.

What changed

On 20 August 2026 the Small Business Administration published a proposed rule setting new small business size standards for 338 industry groups and industries (91 FR 53741, RIN 3245-AI67, Docket No. SBA-2026-0199). SBA originally set a 21 September 2026 comment deadline and has since extended it to 20 November 2026; see the update of 27 September below.

Four structural changes sit inside the rule. First, standards move from the 6-digit NAICS level to a mix of 4- and 5-digit codes, cutting nearly 1,000 individual standards down to 338, and all size standard exceptions are proposed for removal. Second, employee-based measurement becomes the default wherever SBA has discretion, converting a number of industries off receipts. Third, monetary standards receive a productivity adjustment on top of the usual inflation adjustment; SBA states it last adjusted for inflation effective 19 December 2022 (87 FR 69118) and has never before adjusted for productivity. Fourth, no standard is reduced. SBA identifies 45 industries where its own analysis would support a decrease and proposes to hold them at current levels.

Why it matters

This is an eligibility rule, and eligibility drives who can bid. SBA's Office of Advocacy estimates the two concurrent proposals would newly classify roughly 110,000 to 114,500 additional firms as small, which expands the competitive pool for set-asides across 8(a), HUBZone, WOSB and EDWOSB, and SDVOSB. Firms comfortably under a threshold today may find themselves competing against considerably larger companies on the same set-aside.

Practical steps: check every primary and secondary NAICS you bid under against the proposed table. If one of your codes converts from receipts to employees, the calculation changes basis entirely, from average annual receipts to average number of employees, and a firm that is small under one measure is not automatically small under the other. Joint venture and teaming analysis built on the current standards may need to be re-run. Consolidation to 4- and 5-digit codes also means a 6-digit code you rely on today may no longer have its own standard.

One caution on sourcing: the full current-versus-proposed comparison table is published in the Federal Register as page images rather than machine-readable text. Verify your specific code against the rule itself or SBA's table of size standards, not against a secondary summary.

Update, 21 September 2026

SBA's Office of Advocacy announced on 14 September 2026 that SBA would hold a virtual public forum on both this rule and the companion methodology notice on Thursday 17 September 2026, and stated that SBA officials would not provide substantive responses to speakers' testimony during the forum. The forum itself did not change the written comment deadline. (Superseded in part: see the 27 September update below, which extends that deadline.)

Sources disagree on whether a second, in-person testimony session was also scheduled. A law firm weekly update dated 17 September 2026 described SBA considering in-person public testimony on Monday 21 September, 9:30 to 11:30 Mountain Time in Denver, citing an SBA event registration page. SBA's Office of Advocacy alert describes only the 17 September virtual forum. The two accounts have not been reconciled here.

Update, 27 September 2026

SBA has extended the comment period by 60 days. A notice published 24 September 2026 (91 FR 60524, FR Doc. 2026-19546) extends comments on both this proposed rule and the companion Revised Size Standards Methodology (91 FR 54096) to 20 November 2026. The notice states the extension was effective as of filing on 21 September 2026, the day the original periods were due to close, so there was no gap in which the docket was closed. SBA cites requests for more time and its own clarification of the impacts of the proposed changes as the reasons. Nothing in the proposal itself changed. If you held off because you missed 21 September, the window is open again; comments go to Docket No. SBA-2026-0199 for the standards and Docket No. SBA-2026-0265 for the methodology.

Primary sources

Small Business Size Standards, 91 FR 53741 (20 August 2026): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/20/2026-17042/small-business-size-standards

Small Business Size Standards, extension of comment periods, 91 FR 60524 (24 September 2026): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/24/2026-19546/small-business-size-standards

SBA Office of Advocacy regulatory alert (20 August 2026): https://advocacy.sba.gov/2026/08/20/sba-issues-proposed-rules-on-industry-size-standards-and-revised-size-standards-methodology/

SBA Office of Advocacy, "SBA to Host Public Forum on Proposed Size Standards Rules" (14 September 2026): https://advocacy.sba.gov/2026/09/14/sba-to-host-public-forum-on-proposed-size-standards-rules/