The formal answer
TED, or Tenders Electronic Daily, is the online version of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, the series known as OJ S. It is run by the Publications Office, and a new issue appears every working day.
TED states that "every day, from Monday to Friday over 3 000 public procurement notices are published on TED", and that contracts worth about 815 billion euro are published each year, though that figure carries no year. Published statistics record 800,797 notices for 2024.
The machinery is simple: above certain values, EU buyers must send notices electronically to the Publications Office, which publishes them within five days. The EU pays, and access is free.
The thresholds that decide what reaches TED
TED is not a complete list of public-sector work across Europe. Publication thresholds changed on 1 January 2026. These figures come from Commission Delegated Regulations 2025/2152, 2025/2150 and 2025/2151, and apply for 2026 and 2027. The central government figure was previously €143,000.
| Contract type | Threshold from 1 January 2026 |
|---|---|
| Services and supplies, central government authorities | €140,000 |
| Services and supplies, sub-central authorities | €216,000 |
| Services and supplies, utilities | €432,000 |
| Works contracts | €5,404,000 |
| Social and other specific services, classical | €750,000 |
A trap worth naming. EU thresholds are net of VAT. UK thresholds include VAT. Compare the two without adjusting and you will put a contract on the wrong side of a line. Both revise on the same two-year cycle, tracking the WTO Government Procurement Agreement, so any threshold quoted without a date range is unreliable.
The consequence is blunt. A 90,000 euro website rebuild for a Dutch municipality sits below the sub-central threshold, so it may not appear on TED. TED gives you the top of every EU market, not the whole of any.
Sources checked 17 September 2026: the European Commission threshold table, eForms guidance on voluntary notices and TED's UK transition guidance.
The notice types you will meet
TED organises notices into several form types and subtypes. The ones that matter to a bidder:
- Prior information notice, called a periodic indicative notice in utilities. An advance signal. Some are informational, some shorten later deadlines, some act as the call for competition.
- Contract notice, or concession notice. The live opportunity, published under either the standard regime or the lighter one for social and other specific services.
- Contract award notice. Who won, and usually for how much. The best free competitor research in Europe.
- Contract modification notices. They tell you when a contract was extended, and so when it will not be re-tendered. A voluntary ex-ante transparency notice signals an intended direct award.
- Pre-market consultation notices. The earliest point at which you can influence a specification, and the most under-used.
eForms, and why they made searching better
eForms are the EU standard for how notices are structured, set by Commission Implementing Regulation 2019/1780. Buyers could use them from 14 November 2022, and they became the only permitted standard on 25 October 2023. The stated aim included increasing "economic operators' ability to find relevant notices", and the effect matched the intent: notices are now machine-readable structured data, which is why filtering by category, procedure and value works better here than on many national portals.
Ireland, the nearest cross-border market
For a UK firm, Ireland is usually the first EU market worth watching: shared language, similar buyers, no translation problem. Irish above-threshold notices appear on TED. Nationally the portal is eTenders at etenders.gov.ie, relaunched on 15 May 2023, which the Office of Government Procurement describes as displaying "all Irish public sector procurement opportunities being advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), as well as other lower-value contracts".
Irish national thresholds are lower: public bodies must advertise above 50,000 euro for goods and services and 200,000 euro for works, both excluding VAT. Between those figures and the EU thresholds, check eTenders directly; you cannot rely on those notices also reaching TED. One caution: irl.eu-supply.com is an archive of pre-May-2023 notices, not the current portal.
Can a UK firm still bid?
Yes, though it is worth stating precisely rather than cheerfully. Since 1 January 2021, Find a Tender has been the UK service for notices that previously went to TED. UK suppliers are a separate question. The UK became a WTO Government Procurement Agreement party in its own right on 1 January 2021, and the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement incorporates the relevant GPA provisions and adds coverage.
For what the agreements call covered procurement, EU authorities must accord UK suppliers "treatment no less favourable" than domestic suppliers. That guarantee extends beyond the GPA baseline to sectors the two sides added, including telecommunications-related services, real estate and education.
Where it stops. Coverage is defined, not universal. Procurement below the relevant thresholds is not covered, and certain services are carved out, including human health services. Outside covered procurement there is no guaranteed right of access. The honest summary: UK firms can bid widely in the EU, on equal terms for a large defined slice of it, and at the buyer's discretion outside it.
The language reality
This decides whether cross-border bidding is viable, and it is more manageable than the folklore suggests. A notice is published in full in the official EU language the buyer chose, and that version is the sole authentic text. A summary appears in the other official languages. TED offers machine translation, although requesting one requires a signed-in account, and search works across all languages at once.
What machine translation does not solve is the tender itself. The documents, the clarifications, the submission portal and often the contract will be in the buyer's language. Reading a Dutch notice is easy. Writing a winning Dutch bid to a Dutch deadline is a different commitment. Ireland avoids this, which is why it is the sensible first step.
How we read it
TenderVerdict reads TED nightly through its official API, in whatever language each notice was published in, alongside Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and BOAMP. A selection of promising notices is assessed against your checked capability profile, with BID, STRETCH or SKIP and the reasons. Each brief has a shortlist limit. The limits: we judge the notice, not the pack, and we do not read national portals outside the UK and France. Some smaller notices are published voluntarily on TED, but that is not complete national coverage.
Common questions
Is TED free to use?
Yes. Access is free of charge and the EU bears the cost of publication. You can search as a guest. A free EU Login account is needed to save searches, set alerts and request translations.
Are UK contracts still published on TED?
New UK procurements moved to Find a Tender from 1 January 2021. Notices relating to procedures published by 31 December 2020 may still appear on TED.
What are the EU thresholds for 2026?
From 1 January 2026: 140,000 euro for central government services and supplies, 216,000 euro for sub-central authorities, 432,000 euro for utilities, 5,404,000 euro for works. All net of VAT.
Can a UK company bid for an EU contract on TED?
Yes. For covered procurement under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, EU buyers must give UK suppliers treatment no less favourable than domestic suppliers. Outside that, access is not guaranteed.
What language are TED notices in?
Each notice is published in full in the official EU language the buyer chose, and that version is the sole authentic text. A summary appears in other official languages. Machine translation is available to signed-in users.
Does TED carry Irish tenders?
Yes, above threshold. Ireland's national portal is eTenders, relaunched 15 May 2023, showing daily all Irish notices going to the Official Journal plus lower-value contracts. Irish buyers advertise nationally from 50,000 euro.
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