Set-aside notices in October 2026
Federal contract notices set aside for small businesses, posted on SAM.gov from October 1 to October 26, 2026, the first weeks of fiscal 2027.
6 in 10 came from one agency.
Agencies posted 6,505 small business set-aside notices in these 26 days. The Defense Logistics Agency posted 3,819 of them, or 59%. Almost all of those (3,695) are spare-part orders with titles like "28--MOTOR,PNEUMATIC", many due within a week or two. Take the Defense Logistics Agency out and the rest of the government posted 2,686 set-aside notices.
That skew shows up in the set-aside types too. Of 286 HUBZone set-aside notices, 272 were Defense Logistics Agency part orders. Of 188 women-owned small business notices, 154 were. The 8(a) program went the other way. It had 115 notices, 1.8% of all set-asides, and 114 of them came from outside the Defense Logistics Agency.
By agency
Defense Department components are listed on their own.
| Agency | Set-aside notices | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Defense Logistics Agency | 3,819 | 58.7% |
| Army | 592 | 9.1% |
| Veterans Affairs | 591 | 9.1% |
| Navy | 353 | 5.4% |
| Air Force | 287 | 4.4% |
| Agriculture | 231 | 3.6% |
| Interior | 136 | 2.1% |
| Homeland Security | 112 | 1.7% |
| Justice | 69 | 1.1% |
| NASA | 63 | 1.0% |
| Health and Human Services | 48 | 0.7% |
| General Services Administration | 47 | 0.7% |
| Transportation | 41 | 0.6% |
| All others | 116 | 1.8% |
| Total | 6,505 | 100% |
By set-aside type
| Set aside | All agencies | Without the Defense Logistics Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Small business, total or partial | 5,008 | 1,948 |
| Service-disabled veteran-owned | 853 | 521 |
| HUBZone | 286 | 14 |
| Women-owned, including economically disadvantaged | 188 | 34 |
| 8(a), set aside or sole source | 115 | 114 |
| Other (Indian economic enterprise, Buy Indian, veteran-owned at VA, local area) | 55 | 55 |
| Total | 6,505 | 2,686 |
How we counted
We read the public SAM.gov Contract Opportunities extract, modified October 27, 2026 at 03:30 GMT. A notice counts when it was posted from October 1 to October 26, carries a small business set aside, and is not an award notice. Solicitations, combined synopsis and solicitations, presolicitations, sources sought and special notices are all counted. A "spare-part order" is a Defense Logistics Agency notice whose title starts with a two-digit supply class and two hyphens, the way that agency titles its part buys.
Some limits to keep in mind:
- The extract lists active notices only. A notice that was canceled or archived before October 27 is not counted, so these numbers are a floor.
- The count is notices, not contracts. The same solicitation can appear as more than one notice. Counted once each, the 6,505 notices are 5,390 solicitations.
- We have no earlier year in this data, so this page makes no claim about a trend.
To check a number on SAM.gov, search Contract Opportunities with Active notices only, set the published date to October 1 through October 26, 2026, and filter by set-aside type or by agency. Counts will drift a little as notices are archived.
Get the data
Every one of the 6,505 notices is in this free CSV, with the notice ID, posted date, title, agency, office, notice type, set aside, NAICS and PSC codes, response deadline, state and a link to the notice on SAM.gov: set-aside-notices-october-2026.csv (2.2 MB). Contracting officer names, emails and phones are left out. SAM.gov data is a US government work, so you're free to reuse it. A link back here is appreciated.
To get new notices like these every day, filtered by keyword, NAICS, set aside, state or agency and with the companies that won similar work at that agency before, use our SAM.gov Contract Opportunities with Past Award Winners tool on Apify. The weekly list is free at set-aside contracts this week.