In basis of my experience, as much as HLB of surfactant is less, the potential of foam generation and foam stability is higher. CMC is a function of HLB, but even high HLB surfactants can provide ultra-low IFT conditions at usually high concentrations. For example: SDBS is an anionic surfactant with HLB ~ 21, however, it can provide the IFT values less than 1 mN/m (0.82 mN/m) at 5000 ppm (CMC) [10.1021/acsomega.0c04464].

In other words, the topic of foam is not as dependent on IFT as it is on HLB.

Read my paper..