Form 8-K
A report of a specific material event, filed within days of the event rather than on a calendar schedule.
Updated 2026-07-26
The 8-K exists so that significant events do not wait for the next quarterly report. Each one cites the item numbers it is filed under, and those numbers say what kind of event it is: a change of officers, a completed acquisition, a departure from a listing standard, the release of results.
Because it is event-driven, the density of 8-K filings is uneven by design. A quiet company files a handful a year; a company in the middle of a transaction can file several a week.
An 8-K states that something happened. It rarely quantifies it. Numbers usually arrive later, in the next periodic report, tagged and comparable.
Related terms
4 entries- Amended filing
- A later version of a filing that corrects or supplements the original, usually marked with an /A suffix.
- Disclosure lag
- The gap between the date something happened and the date it became public.
- Form 10-K
- The annual report of a U.S. public company, containing audited financial statements and a description of the business.
- Form 10-Q
- The quarterly report of a U.S. public company, with unaudited financial statements.
Where this appears in the data
Written for reading the records published here. This is not a legal, tax or accounting definition, and where a jurisdiction defines the term precisely, that definition governs.