TED (Tenders Electronic Daily)

What is TED (Tenders Electronic Daily)?

TED, or Tenders Electronic Daily, is the official publication channel for public procurement notices across the European Union. If you're chasing government contracts in Europe, this is where they live.

Run by the Publications Office of the European Union, TED publishes around 700,000 procurement notices per year, representing roughly EUR 700 billion in contract value. That's not a typo. Every working day, approximately 2,600 new notices appear on the platform.

But here's the thing: TED isn't a procurement portal in the traditional sense. You can't submit bids through TED. It's a publication service, a centralised place where contracting authorities across the EU are legally required to advertise certain tenders. Think of it as the official gazette for European public procurement.

Which tenders appear on TED?

Not every EU public tender ends up on TED. Publication is mandatory only when contract values exceed specific thresholds, which are set by the European Commission and revised every two years.

Current thresholds (2024-2025):

Contract Type	Central Government	Sub-central Authorities
Supplies & Services	EUR 143,000	EUR 221,000
Works	EUR 5,538,000	EUR 5,538,000
Social & other specific services	EUR 750,000	EUR 750,000

These thresholds apply to contracts covered by Directive 2014/24/EU (public sector) and Directive 2014/25/EU (utilities). Defence procurement follows separate rules under Directive 2009/81/EC.

Contracts below these thresholds? They typically appear only on national portals. Which brings us to an important point.

TED vs National Procurement Portals

If you're serious about winning EU public contracts, you need to understand how TED fits into the broader picture.

Every EU member state operates its own national procurement portal. Germany has its system, France has another, Spain has its own. You get the idea. We cover 25+ EU country procurement systems in detail.

Here's how the relationship works:

• Above-threshold contracts: Must be published on TED. May also appear on national portals.
• Below-threshold contracts: Published only on national portals. Never appear on TED.

This creates a coverage gap that catches many businesses off guard. If you're only monitoring TED, you're missing every contract below the thresholds. In many sectors, that's the majority of opportunities.

At Open Opportunities, we monitor TED alongside 800+ other procurement sources precisely because relying on a single source leaves money on the table.

Understanding TED Notice Types

TED publishes several types of notices, each serving a different purpose in the procurement lifecycle:

Prior Information Notices (PINs): Early warnings that a contracting authority plans to procure something. No guarantee a tender will follow, but useful for pipeline planning.

Contract Notices: The main event. These are active tenders you can bid on. Contains the scope, requirements, deadlines, and how to obtain tender documents.

Contract Award Notices: Published after a contract is awarded. Tells you who won, for how much, and often provides insight into what buyers actually valued.

Corrigenda: Corrections or modifications to previously published notices. Easy to miss, potentially costly if you do.

Voluntary Ex-Ante Transparency Notices: Used when an authority intends to award a contract without competition. Rare, but worth knowing about.

For most suppliers, Contract Notices are the priority. But experienced bid teams also monitor PINs for early intelligence and Award Notices for competitive analysis. Knowing who's winning, and at what prices, helps you sharpen future bids.

eForms: The New Standard

Since October 2023, TED has been transitioning to eForms, a new standardised format for procurement notices that replaces the older TED XML schemas.

Why should you care? eForms provide more structured, granular data about each tender. Fields like CPV codes (which classify what's being procured), lot structures, and evaluation criteria are now captured more consistently.

For suppliers, this means:

• Better search and filtering capabilities
• More detailed information upfront
• Easier comparison across notices from different countries

The transition is ongoing. Some contracting authorities have fully adopted eForms while others are still catching up. If you're building automated monitoring (or using a service like ours), this matters for data quality.

How to Search TED Effectively

TED offers a free search interface at ted.europa.eu. It works, but it has limitations.

What TED search does well:

• Full text search across all published notices
• Filtering by country, CPV code, contract type, and date
• Downloading notices in various formats
• Setting up basic email alerts

Where it falls short:

• No intelligent matching to your business profile
• Alert emails can be noisy and poorly targeted
• Historical search is cumbersome
• No integration with national below-threshold opportunities

If you're doing occasional research or checking specific known tenders, the TED interface is fine. If you're systematically pursuing EU contracts, you'll likely find the limitations frustrating.

This is precisely why services like Open Opportunities exist. We pull data from TED (and hundreds of other sources), apply AI-powered matching to your specific capabilities, and deliver relevant opportunities, not noise. The goal is spending your time on bid writing, not bid finding.

Practical Tips for TED

Get your CPV codes right. The Common Procurement Vocabulary is how EU tenders are classified. Knowing which codes match your offerings is fundamental to effective searching. A supplier offering "IT consulting" might need to monitor 72000000 (IT services), 79400000 (business consulting), and several others.

Watch the deadlines. TED tenders typically allow 30-35 days for submission, though this varies. Accelerated procedures can compress timelines significantly. Missing a deadline by minutes means exactly the same as missing it by months.

Don't ignore award notices. Losing bidders often skip these. That's a mistake. Award notices reveal pricing benchmarks, winning company profiles, and contracting authority preferences. Competitive intelligence is free. Use it.

Check for corrigenda. A modified deadline or changed specification can invalidate work you've already done. Before submitting any bid, verify you're working from the current version of the notice.

Think beyond TED. For comprehensive EU coverage, combine TED monitoring with national portal tracking. Many countries also have regional or sector-specific platforms. Our coverage page breaks down what we monitor and where.

Who Uses TED?

The short answer: anyone serious about EU public sector sales.

• Large enterprises pursuing major infrastructure and framework contracts
• SMEs looking to break into public sector markets (the EU has specific SME-friendly procurement rules)
• Consultancies and professional services firms targeting government advisory work
• Construction and engineering companies bidding on works contracts
• Technology vendors supplying to public sector digital transformation initiatives

The EU actively tries to make procurement accessible to smaller suppliers. Dividing contracts into lots, simplifying documentation requirements, and promoting electronic submission all aim to level the playing field. Whether that works in practice varies by sector and buyer.

Our Coverage

We've monitored TED since our founding. It's a cornerstone source, but only one piece of our European procurement coverage.

When you set up tender alerts with Open Opportunities, we automatically include TED alongside relevant national portals, giving you above-threshold and below-threshold visibility without managing multiple searches.

Ready to stop manually checking TED? Start your free trial and see relevant EU tenders in your inbox tomorrow.