Treasury finalizes technical amendments to marketable securities auction rules

The Department of the Treasury's Fiscal Service issued a final rule amending the Uniform Offering Circular (UOC) for the sale and issue of marketable book-entry Treasury bills, notes and bonds. The amendments are effective October 15, 2026, and are codified at 31 CFR part 356. All auctions of Treasury marketable securities conducted after that date must follow the revised definitions, terminology and procedural requirements.

Changes include updated definitions of adjusted value, dated date, index, index rate, index ratio, issue date and settlement amount in § 356.2, and removal of obsolete references such as paper bids and the former CUSIP-issuing entity. The rule also replaces the terms "accept" and "tender" with "award" and "recognize" in §§ 356.20 and 356.23, and clarifies that the list of information in auction results is illustrative.

The most consequential operational change concerns non-competitive customer bids. Under the revised § 356.14(c) and (e), submitters must provide each individual customer's name and bid amount before the non-competitive auction close; a summary bid amount is no longer permissible. Submissions may still be consolidated in a single list, but the list must be received prior to the close to allow Treasury staff to finalize post-auction operations earlier in the day.

Sections 356.14 and 356.23 also shift the location of auction results from a TreasuryDirect URL to the Treasury website, giving the agency greater administrative flexibility while preserving public transparency. The applicability date for the non-competitive bid provisions and the results-publication change is tied to the first auction conducted using Treasury's upgraded auction system, which Treasury will announce in advance of that auction. The final rule, FR Doc No. 2026-21069, is not a major rule under the Congressional Review Act and is exempt from notice-and-comment requirements under the APA.