Post-shutdown recovery is one item carrying over from calendar year 2025 into 2026 and the chance of another funding stoppage happening on Jan. 30 is not zero percent.

That here-and-now is the starting point of this episode where Stephanie Smith, GovCon industry senior analyst and valuation services director at RSM, takes us through some of the major themes and talking points that will shape the ecosystem in 2026.

How do we define the “non-traditional contractor” and what do their prospects look like? As Steph tells our Ross Wilkers, technical definitions and terms for talking about these companies are moving targets.

Steph and Ross also went over artificial intelligence’s impacts to contractors’ business models, key macroeconomics and industrial policy developments for GovCon to monitor, and qualitative drivers of true value in a business.