This is a 100-page database with 11 entry points. Use the one that matches your job.

You don't need to read top-to-bottom. Pick the section that matches what you're trying to decide and ignore the rest.

10 things in this data that even procurement professionals get wrong.

Each card is a single finding — independently sourced, defensible, surprising. They tell you where the data deviates from what people assume.

The EU spent — on IT, software, cybersecurity, engineering and adjacent services over — months.

Across — public buyers in — countries, awarding work to — distinct suppliers. Median deal size is — — most of this market is SME-scale, not mega-deals.

Eight sectors covered. Pick yours and ignore the rest.

Each card shows total awards, disclosed value and median deal size for that sector. Engineering is the heavyweight by volume; IT services and software are the most concentrated.

Eight bidder archetypes. Find the one that looks like you.

Not every bidder should chase every tender. These eight playbooks identify the handful of countries, CPV categories and tactics that match a specific bidder profile — derived from the data, not opinion.

Which countries are big and open to new suppliers?

Every EU market plotted by two dimensions: market size (notice volume) vs openness (blended SME win-rate, foreign winner share, and inverse top-3 supplier concentration). Top-right quadrant is where you want to be: lots of deals AND new names still win them.

Twelve biggest EU markets, one card each.

Each card gives the one-minute brief a bidder needs: market size, typical deal value, SME win-rate, supplier concentration, top buyer, and a 36-month volume sparkline.

The single most useful chart in this report.

Every (country, sector) cell, sized by award count. Hover for exact numbers. Use it to find your lane: a sector that's underserved in a country with the buying power to award work.

The 30 biggest framework agreements awarded.

Framework agreements are multi-year blanket deals — winning one is worth ten small contracts. Not the first thing a new bidder should chase, but they should be on your roadmap. Each of these is worth €100M to €1.4B.

What's actually being bought, by category.

CPV-4 is the useful granularity — specific enough to position your service, broad enough to have statistical weight. Sort by what matters to you: SME share if you're small, deal size if you're chasing big, unique-winners count for competitive openness.

Top 25 EU public-IT suppliers, by value and by volume.

The competitive landscape: established integrators plus a long tail of specialists and local SMEs. If a name here looks familiar, it's probably your direct competitor.

Cyber is the fastest-growing line in EU IT procurement.

NIS2, DORA and national cyber-agency budgets are pushing security spend up. This zoom-in covers notices tagged with security software (48730000), security software dev (72212730–72212732), audit & testing (72800000), and security services (79710000–79714000).

How long does an EU IT tender actually take?

Three intervals — when buyers publish, when bids close, when awards land. Note: timing analysis covers the IT/software/cyber subset, 2025-01 → today (the only period for which we have both contract notices and award notices linked).

— via heuristic match (buyer + CPV-4 + 14–540 day window).

EU public procurement has rhythm. Plan your bid-writing around it.

Award publications follow a repeatable annual cycle. Across all 40 months, peak months are Q1 (budget cycle starts) and Q4 (year-end). Plan BD capacity when buyers publish, not when you're sitting on a pipeline drought.

How this report was built.

Source: TED — Tenders Electronic Daily, the EU Commission's official public-procurement database, queried via its public Search API v3. Reused under the Commission's open-data licence (CC BY 4.0).