Public procurement supply contracts in Europe: facts and figures (2023–2026)

The headline numbers

contract awards for supplies since November 2023

1,604,107

contract awards for supplies since November 2023

TED award notices they come from

332,914

TED award notices they come from

distinct winning companies

103,430

distinct winning companies

distinct public buyers

36,397

distinct public buyers

of awards in the last 12 months went to a company registered in the buyer's country

98.6%

of awards in the last 12 months went to a company registered in the buyer's country

went directly to a company registered abroad

1.4%

went directly to a company registered abroad

of awards with a known tender count came from a single tender (last 12 months)

31.0%

of awards with a known tender count came from a single tender (last 12 months)

of awards publish a framework ceiling instead of a price

25.3%

of awards publish a framework ceiling instead of a price

Counted on 8 November 2026 from TED contract award notices (how we count, full method). Last 12 months = notices published 1 November 2025 to 6 November 2026: 135,419 notices, 821,175 awards, 60,233 winning companies, 22,137 buyers. An award is one winner on one lot or contract line; it is not a tender and not an amount of money. Values are never totalled: 67.3% of awards carry an awarded value, 25.3% a framework ceiling.

Local-winner share by country

Awards dated since 1 November 2023 by the buyer's country. "Local" means the winning company is registered in the same country as the buyer; a foreign group's local subsidiary counts as local. "Top foreign origin" is the country whose companies won most of the rest. Single-bid share = award rows from lots with exactly one tender, among rows with a known tender count. Coverage of Croatia, Luxembourg and Iceland starts in early 2024 (their switch to eForms); Liechtenstein has too few notices to read much into.

How big public purchasing is, country by country

Official statistics for the whole market that the award notices above sample: general government spending on goods, services and investment (intermediate consumption, gross fixed capital formation and social transfers in kind bought from market producers — ESA 2010 items P.2, P.51G and D.632), the measure the OECD uses for public procurement in Government at a Glance and the European Commission uses, as a proxy for its upper range, in its 2025 evaluation of the directives. In the EU-27 it came to €2.93 trillion in 2025, 15.5% of GDP. The European Commission puts EU public procurement at around €2.6 trillion a year, 15% of GDP (the same measure for 2023), and estimates that the EU directives, and so TED, cover as much as a quarter of it. About a third of the EU total is social transfers in kind, such as care paid for by statutory health insurance, which is seldom tendered. The split by function (health, education, defence) uses the same items by COFOG function and depends on how each country organises the sector — where statutory health insurance is classified in government, as in Germany or the Netherlands, purchased care counts here. € billion, current prices.

Totals: latest year 2025; functions: 2024 (COFOG is published a year later). Source: Eurostat, government finance statistics (gov_10a_main, gov_10a_exp) and GDP (nama_10_gdp), retrieved 9 November 2026.

What public buyers buy: the largest categories

By CPV division of the notice (the EU's Common Procurement Vocabulary), awards dated since 1 November 2023. Medical supplies dominate because hospitals split tenders into many lots.

Who wins abroad

Awards won by a company registered outside the buyer's country, by the winner's country of registration, since 1 November 2023. German, Swedish, Dutch and Czech companies win most often across a border; among non-EEA origins the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States lead.

How the contracts are awarded: tenders, procedures, speed, winner size

Five figures on the procedures behind the awards, for all 30 countries together and then country by country. A dash means the notices of that country state the field too rarely to say. Each country name opens its own page of figures.

tenders per awarded lot (median, 1,040,990 lots with a stated count)

2

tenders per awarded lot (median, 1,040,990 lots with a stated count)

of awarded lots drew three or more tenders

36.2%

of awarded lots drew three or more tenders

of award notices come from a negotiated procedure without a prior call for competition (24,468 of 326,402)

7.5%

of award notices come from a negotiated procedure without a prior call for competition (24,468 of 326,402)

of award notices name more than one buyer (11,976 joint purchases)

3.7%

of award notices name more than one buyer (11,976 joint purchases)

from the conclusion of the contract to the notice on TED (median)

13 days

from the conclusion of the contract to the notice on TED (median)

of award notices appear within 30 days of the contract

77.1%

of award notices appear within 30 days of the contract

of awards that state the winner's size went to a small or medium-sized company (size stated for 78.5% of awards)

58.2%

of awards that state the winner's size went to a small or medium-sized company (size stated for 78.5% of awards)

56 of the joint purchases name buyers from more than one country.

Counted on 10 November 2026 from live TED contract award notices for supplies, awards dated since 1 November 2023. A lot is one part of a procedure; the tender count is the number the buyer states for the lot. "Without a prior call" is the procedure the notice itself names (negotiated without prior call for competition). Days run from the last contract concluded under a notice to the day TED published it; notices without that date are left out. Winner size is what the buyer ticked in the notice, so it is a share of the awards that state it, not of all awards. A figure is shown only where the field is filled in for at least 60% of the notices. Full method.

Awards by year

How we count

• Source: TED, the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU, read from its daily and monthly notice packages; contract award notices for supplies from buyers in the EU, the EEA and the UK's successor data where published on TED.
• Only live notices: a version replaced by a correction is left out; an award repeated by a later notice of the same procedure is counted once; a winner is counted only when the notice names a concluded contract (a "non-winning tenderer" is not evidence).
• Companies are matched across notices by their registration number, and by name and city only when neither side has a number. Natural persons named in notices are never shown.
• Shares are shares of awards, not of value and not of procedures. Full method: methodology.

How to cite

Cresques, "Public procurement supply contracts in Europe: facts and figures", counted 8 November 2026 from TED contract award notices, https://cresques.com/data. Figures may be quoted with attribution; the per-country and per-company detail is in the application and on the public market pages. Press and researchers: hello@cresques.com.

Every figure and every table has its own address: add the anchor to the link, for example https://cresques.com/data#single-bid-rate or https://cresques.com/data#local-winner-share. For one category across Europe, or one category in one country, cite its market page: each has the same citation block and a JSON file.

Download the tables: countries (CSV) · everything on this page (JSON). Licence CC BY 4.0: reuse freely with the attribution "Cresques, cresques.com/data".

Questions

How big is public procurement in Europe?

General government spending on goods, services and investment in the EU-27 — the measure the OECD and the European Commission use for public procurement — came to €2.93 trillion in 2025, 15.5% of GDP and 31.3% of all government expenditure (Eurostat). Only the contracts above the EU thresholds are published on TED; the table on this page gives the figure for each country.

What counts as a contract award in these figures?

One winner named on one lot or contract line in a TED contract award notice for supplies, where a contract was concluded. A notice with 40 lots and one winner each counts as 40 awards. Awards are not tenders and not money.

Why do you not add up the contract values?

Only 67.3% of awards since November 2023 carry an awarded value; 25.3% publish a framework ceiling, which is a maximum, not sales. Adding the two would overstate the market, so Cresques never totals values across kinds.

What does the local-winner share mean?

The share of awards in a country that went to a company registered in that country. A German subsidiary of a US group counts as German. The remainder are direct wins by companies registered abroad.

How is the single-bid rate measured here?

The share of award rows whose lot reports exactly one tender received, among rows where the number of tenders is published. It is a share of awards, not of procedures, so countries that split tenders into many lots weigh more.

Where do the numbers come from and how often are they updated?

From the daily and monthly notice packages of TED, the EU's public procurement journal, read by Cresques since November 2023 and refreshed every weekday. This page was counted on 8 November 2026 and is refreshed monthly.