The VA is the second-largest federal buyer after Defense, and it buys almost everything: medical equipment, construction, IT, facilities support, staffing, logistics. It also buys differently than any other agency. By law, the VA must look for a veteran-owned business first, before it considers any other type of small business. If you are a veteran-owned firm, the VA is the single most favorable customer in the federal government. If you are not, there is still a real path, and it starts the same way for everyone.
Here is how to actually get on a VA contract.
Register first: SAM.gov is non-negotiableBefore the VA can pay you a dollar, you have to be active in SAM.gov (the System for Award Management). Registration is free. You will need an EIN, a bank account for electronic payment, and a UEI (Unique Entity ID), which SAM issues during registration. Pick your NAICS codes carefully, because contracting officers search by them, and your codes determine which small-business size standard applies to you.
SAM registration is also where your socioeconomic status lives. When a VA buyer runs market research, they are filtering SAM for businesses that match the work and carry the right designation. If you are not in SAM, you are invisible. If you need a walkthrough of the registration and certification mechanics, our federal certification guides cover the document checklist and the order of operations.
The Veterans First Contracting Program changes the orderMost agencies follow the standard FAR set-aside hierarchy. The VA does not. Under 38 U.S.C. 8127, the Veterans First Contracting Program requires VA contracting officers to consider SDVOSB (Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business) and VOSB (Veteran-Owned Small Business) firms ahead of every other category, including 8(a), WOSB, and HUBZone.
The mechanic that matters is the rule of two. If a contracting officer has a reasonable expectation that two or more eligible SDVOSBs (then VOSBs) will submit fair-market offers, the requirement must be set aside for that group. The VA's statutory goal is to award at least 7% of its contract dollars to certified VOSB and SDVOSB firms each year, and it consistently exceeds it. That priority is not a soft preference. It is a procurement order the buyer is required to follow.
Certification: self-certification is goneThis is the rule that trips up the most veteran-owned firms in 2026. Self-certification for SDVOSB status ended. As of December 22, 2024, only firms certified by the SBA Veteran Small Business Certification program (VetCert) count toward agency goals and can win SDVOSB/VOSB set-asides. (Firms that self-certified and had applied for certification on or before December 31, 2023 got a grace window, but that bridge has closed for new entrants.)
VetCert is now run by the SBA at veterans.certify.sba.gov, not the VA. The core requirement: at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more veterans, and for SDVOSB status, by a veteran the VA has rated as service-disabled. The SBA cleared its certification backlog in late 2025 and reported average processing around 12 days, so the bottleneck that used to define this program has eased considerably. Get certified before you chase a set-aside, not after you find one.
For the other federal set-asides the VA uses (8(a), HUBZone, WOSB/EDWOSB), certification runs through the SBA as well. Managing several certification applications at once is exactly the kind of fragmented paperwork CertifyAll was built to handle.
What the VA actually buys, and who winsThe VA's spend skews heavily toward services and IT alongside the obvious medical categories. Across the federal government, Computer Systems Design (NAICS 541512) and Facilities Support Services (NAICS 561210) were the two largest SDVOSB award categories in FY2025, at roughly $3.9B and $2.8B respectively. Government-wide SDVOSB awards reached about $28.6 billion in FY2025 across roughly 52,000 contract actions, helped by the FY2024 NDAA raising the government-wide SDVOSB goal from 3% to 5% of prime and subcontract dollars.
Translation: the VA buys a lot of professional services and facilities work from veteran-owned firms, not only hospital equipment. Match your NAICS codes to where the dollars move. You can study an agency's historical award patterns through our federal spending database before you decide which contracts are worth pursuing.
Find the work: SAM.gov and the VA forecastOpen solicitations post on SAM.gov under Contract Opportunities. Set a saved search filtered by your NAICS codes and by set-aside type, and check it on a schedule. Most VA awards above the micro-purchase threshold show up there.
The VA also publishes a forward-looking Procurement Forecast through its VetBiz portal (vetbiz.va.gov/proforecast), which lists anticipated requirements before they hit SAM as live solicitations. That window matters. A forecast entry is your chance to call the listed contact, introduce your firm, and shape your capability statement around a known upcoming need rather than reacting to a solicitation with a two-week response clock.
The realistic path: prime small, subcontract firstMost firms do not land a VA prime contract cold. Two faster routes:
Subcontract to an existing prime. Large VA contracts carry subcontracting plans with small-business and SDVOSB participation targets. Primes actively need diverse subs to meet those goals, which means a certified veteran-owned firm is solving a problem for them. Find the primes on current VA vehicles and pitch them directly.
Start with smaller set-asides. Below the simplified acquisition threshold, the VA can make SDVOSB sole-source awards without full competition. A clean past-performance record on a few smaller VA jobs is the credential that makes you competitive on the bigger ones.
The VA OSDBU (Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, va.gov/osdbu) exists specifically to connect veteran-owned and small businesses to these opportunities, including outreach events and counseling. Use it.
Your next stepThe fastest way to know whether you are ready to compete for VA work, and which set-asides you actually qualify for, is to take stock honestly: SAM registration, certification status, NAICS alignment, past performance. Our government readiness tool walks through those gaps in a few minutes and tells you what to fix first. Start there before you spend a week chasing a solicitation you are not yet positioned to win.
