There are already numerous opinions and forecasts about what the world economy will look like in the nearest future, in the wake of a post-pandemic period. The global world is facing now ? social and economic crisis, never experienced before, the COVID-19 pandemic became a very significant trigger changing the way the world production was conducted in the previous era. In these conditions, large and small businesses are trying to cooperate with each other within the Global Value chains framework, to survive. As the main drivers of global production and financial systems, large corporations had to improve, but it is still difficult to say how long it will take. On the other side, after the pandemic recession, it is becoming more and more obvious that SME sector has increased its impact not only within the national economies, but also in a global scale. A huge amount of financial and institutional support is being provided to the SME sector by the governments, which eventually will lead to an improvement in the International Capital Reproduction System. However, there is still a gap in existing connections within the global value chains, which makes a big challenge for this integration process to be achieved. Although many aspects of globalization are now clearly understood, still there is scarce information on the transforming relations between large companies and their partners - smaller firms and the ways the formers integrate into the Global Value Chains. This study aims to define the evolution of the role of SMEs in the global value chains, identify and assess the factors that contribute to the integration of SMEs into global value chains and explore the impact of GVC onto their institutional framework.