Finding EU tenders on TED: searches that work

Procedures & timing · This guide was generated with the help of an AI system. Its legal references were checked against the official EU texts listed under Sources on 11 October 2026. Next review due by 11 April 2027, or sooner if the law changes. EU rules only. Not legal advice.

Short answer. Every contract above the EU thresholds has to be advertised in the Supplement to the Official Journal, which is published online as TED (ted.europa.eu). Searching it is free. Saved searches and email alerts need a free account. A good search combines three filters: the CPV codes for what you sell, the place of performance, and the notice type (calls for competition, not results). Add keywords only in the notice title, not in the full text, or you’ll drown in false hits. In our test, a full-text search for “cloud” found 6,525 contract notices published in the first nine months of 2026. The same word in the title found 364. And remember what TED doesn’t show: contracts below the thresholds, and the procurement documents themselves, which sit on national platforms.

EU law · What has to be on TED, and when

• Calls for competition and results. Contract notices, prior information notices and contract award notices must be sent electronically to the Publications Office of the EU and published within five days of being sent (Articles 48 to 51). Publication is free for the buyer.
• TED comes first. A notice must not be published at national level before it appears on TED, unless the buyer hasn’t been told of publication within 48 hours of the confirmation of receipt. A national version can’t contain information the EU version doesn’t have (Article 52).
• The documents are free from day one. From the date the notice is published, the buyer must offer “unrestricted and full direct access free of charge” to the procurement documents, and the notice must give the internet address (Article 53(1)).
• What’s not there. The publication duty applies to contracts at or above the thresholds (see EU thresholds 2026–2027). Buyers may publish smaller contracts on TED (Article 51(6)), but many don’t. Those are advertised under national rules, on national or regional portals.

Practice · How TED search is organised

Three scopes. Every search runs within one of them:

Three ways to search. Quick search is a full-text box: it searches every text field, every code label and every language. Advanced search gives you criteria groups: notice type, CPV, nature of contract, place of performance, value, procedure, dates (including the deadline for submission), buyer and legal basis. Expert search lets you write the query yourself, and it’s the one worth learning, because you can save it and reuse it exactly.

Notice types worth knowing. The expert search uses short codes. The ones a bidder needs most:

• cn-standard contract or concession notice (standard regime), and cn-social the light regime for social and other specific services;
• pin-cfc-standard and pin-cfc-social a prior information notice used as the call for competition;
• pin-only a prior information notice for information only: a contract that is coming;
• can-standard a contract award notice: who won, and often at what price.

Practice · Building a search, step by step

A made-up example: a cleaning company that wants office and building cleaning contracts in Belgium and the Netherlands.

1. Start with the CPV tree, not one code. In expert search, a parent code finds its whole branch. classification-cpv = 90910000 (cleaning services) returned the same number of notices as classification-cpv = 9091* when we tested it. So you don’t need to list every child code. (How to choose codes: see CPV codes.)

2. Add the place and the notice type.

classification-cpv = 9091*
AND place-of-performance IN (BEL NLD)
AND notice-type IN (cn-standard
  cn-social pin-cfc-standard)

3. Keep only what you can still bid for. Either choose the Active notices scope, or filter on the deadline:

classification-cpv = 9091*
AND notice-type = cn-standard
AND place-of-performance IN (BEL NLD)
AND deadline-receipt-tender-date-lot
  >= 20261012

4. Save it, and turn it into an alert. See below.

What those steps gave us when we ran them through the TED Search API on 11 October 2026:

Counts change as notices are published and corrected. The point is the order of magnitude: the place and the deadline do most of the work.

Our analysis · Keywords: where to search, and in which language

Full text is noisy. FT searches every field of every notice, including standard wording and addresses. We tested the word “cloud” in contract notices published from January to September 2026:

Two lessons. Search keywords in the title, and run a second search for your keywords outside your CPV codes, because buyers don’t always pick the code you’d expect. The CPV list has no code for “cloud” at all (see CPV codes).

Language. Most notices are written only in the buyer’s language. We searched French buyers’ contract notices (January to September 2026):

• title-proc ~ cleaning (the buyer’s own title) found 0; title-proc ~ nettoyage found 1,267.
• notice-title ~ cleaning found 1,807. TED builds the notice title from the country, the wording of the main CPV code and the buyer’s own title, and holds it in all 24 EU languages. Only the first two parts are translated: “France – Cleaning services – Marché de prestations…” in English, “France – Services de nettoyage – Marché de prestations…” in French. That’s why an English word can work there, and why it only matches the CPV wording.

So: use the CPV code for the subject, and add keywords in the buyer’s languages when you need something narrower than the code.

Expert search tips from TED’s own help. ~ does a full-text match with stemming (running → run) for multilingual fields such as FT. IN takes a list (an implicit OR). A wildcard can’t start a word when the scope is all notices. Use “Check syntax” before you save.

Practice · Alerts that keep running

• You need an EU Login and a TED account. Searching is open to everyone. Saving searches, alerts and RSS feeds needs you to be signed in.
• Up to 25 saved searches. Each can have an RSS feed, and you can create an email alert from a search or from a single notice.
• Watch the 120-day rule. TED deletes an account that has been inactive for more than 120 days, with warning emails 90, 60 and 30 days before. Your saved searches and alerts go with it. Put a recurring reminder in your calendar to sign in.
• Follow a notice, not just a search. A notice alert tells you when a related notice is published, such as a change notice with a new deadline.

Practice · When you’ve found a tender

1. Check you’re reading the latest version. A correction is published as a change notice with its own publication number. Section 10 of the change notice shows what changed. In search, the option “include only the latest versions” hides superseded ones.
2. Look at the related notices. A prior information notice may have announced the contract months ago. An award notice for the last contract tells you the incumbent and, often, the price.
3. Go to the documents. The notice gives the address of the procurement documents. That platform, not TED, is where clarifications, answers and submission happen, and where you may need to register to be told of changes. How to read the notice itself: reading an EU contract notice.
4. Diary the deadlines on the day you find it: the deadline for questions and the deadline for tenders (see clarification questions).

Practice · Beyond the search screen

For larger volumes, TED offers RSS feeds by business sector, daily and monthly XML packages that don’t need an account, and a public Search API that accepts the same expert queries. We used the API to produce the counts on this page.

Practice · A weekly routine

1. Run your saved searches with the deadline filter, or read the alert emails.
2. For each hit, open the notice, check lots, place, deadlines and the documents address. Decide in five minutes whether to read the documents.
3. Once a month, run your keywords without the CPV filter to catch buyers who used a different code.
4. Once a quarter, look at pin-only notices in your codes: those are next year’s tenders, and some buyers consult the market before them (see preliminary market consultation).
5. Sign in to TED at least every few weeks, so the account doesn’t lapse.

What this page doesn’t cover

National and regional procurement portals and how to search them. Contracts below the EU thresholds. Commercial alert services. Tenders of the EU institutions themselves, which are also on TED but follow the EU’s Financial Regulation, not the Directive.