When do most federal contracts expire?
Most federal contracts expire in Q3 2027: 29,168 contracts worth $225.0 billion reach end of performance in that single quarter, the most of any quarter in the coming year.
Source: The Federal Contract Recompete Index, BidSparq
Data as of: October 5, 2026 (refreshed weekly)
Sample: 119,072 expiring federal contracts, grouped by quarter
License: free to cite with attribution to BidSparq
Verify this yourself: USAspending.gov award data archive (the full federal contract award files by fiscal year, including period of performance end dates).
Essential statistics
- Q3 2027 is the peak quarter: 29,168 expiring contracts worth $225.0 billion.
- The federal fiscal year ends September 30, so awards made at fiscal year end tend to expire at fiscal year end too.
- 119,072 contracts expire in total over the next 12 months, worth $640.0 billion.
What this means
The clustering is structural. Agencies obligate a disproportionate share of their budget in the final quarter of the fiscal year, and multi-year periods of performance keep that rhythm on every renewal. For contractors, that means recompete pipelines are seasonal: the quarters before the September peak are when capture work matters most.
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