TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the official online database of the European Union for public procurement notices. Operated by the EU Publications Office, it is the digital version of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, and it publishes every tender across the EU that exceeds the EU thresholds. Whenever a public buyer in any member state runs a contract above those values, EU law requires the notice to appear on TED, in a standardized format, free of charge, and translated across the official EU languages. This is the single point where above-threshold public demand from across Europe becomes visible in one place.

To be clear up front: TED has nothing to do with TED Talks. It is the European tender journal, the backbone of cross-border public procurement, and for any supplier selling to the public sector it is one of the most important data sources to understand. This guide explains what TED is, what it covers, what it does not cover, and how it relates to the thousands of national and regional portals that sit alongside it.

What is TED?

TED, short for Tenders Electronic Daily, is the EU's central publication platform for public contract notices. It is published by the EU Publications Office and corresponds to the "S series" Supplement of the Official Journal of the European Union. Where the Official Journal publishes EU legislation, the Supplement publishes procurement.

A few characteristics define it:

EU-wide scope. TED collects above-threshold notices from all member states, not just one country. A contracting authority in Germany, France, Poland, or Portugal all publish to the same database.
Free and public. Access to ted.europa.eu costs nothing. Anyone can search, read, and download notices.
Multilingual. Notices are available in all official EU languages, so a supplier can read a Spanish tender in English or a Finnish tender in German.
Machine-readable. TED data is published in structured formats and is available for bulk download and via APIs, which is what makes automated tender monitoring possible.

The purpose behind all of this is the single market: a French firm should be able to discover and bid on a contract in Italy as easily as a domestic supplier. TED is the transparency mechanism that makes cross-border competition possible.

What tenders does TED cover?

TED covers public procurement notices above the EU thresholds. The thresholds depend on what is being bought and who is buying. The values in force since 1 January 2026 (as of June 2026) are:

Contract type	Threshold (net)
Goods and services, central government bodies	€140,000
Goods and services, sub-central authorities	€216,000
Works contracts	€5.404 million
Utilities sector (water, energy, transport, postal)	€432,000

These values are set by the EU procurement directives, principally Directive 2014/24/EU for classic public-sector buyers, Directive 2014/25/EU for utilities, and Directive 2014/23/EU for concessions. They are revised every two years by EU delegated regulation, so the current figures apply through the end of 2027 and the next adjustment is due in January 2028. It is worth re-checking the current values before relying on them.

Above the relevant threshold, publication on TED is not optional. It is a legal obligation, and a tender run above threshold without a TED notice is procedurally defective. Notices on TED span the whole procedure lifecycle: a prior information notice (PIN) signals an upcoming opportunity, a contract notice opens a procedure for bids, and a contract award notice records who won and at what value.

How TED notices and eForms work

Until recently, TED notices used older standard forms. Since October 2023, the EU has moved to eForms, a modern standard for electronic procurement notices. eForms restructures notice data into a consistent, granular, machine-readable schema across all member states, which makes it far easier to filter, compare, and process notices automatically rather than reading them one page at a time.

Two technical pieces matter when you work with TED notices:

eForms defines the structure of the notice itself: fields for the buyer, the procedure type (open, restricted, negotiated), deadlines, value, and award criteria.
CPV codes classify the subject of the contract. The Common Procurement Vocabulary is a standardized numeric taxonomy, and every TED notice carries one or more CPV codes describing what is being procured. If you want to monitor only the tenders relevant to your business, CPV codes are the primary filter. See our guide to CPV codes for how to choose the right ones.

The combination of eForms and CPV is what turns TED from a wall of documents into structured data that software can route to the right supplier.

How to use TED

For an occasional search, TED is straightforward: go to ted.europa.eu, use the search and filters to narrow by country, CPV code, publication date, procedure type, or value, and open the notices that match. You can save searches and set up basic notifications.

For systematic monitoring, the manual approach runs into limits quickly. A practical workflow looks like this:

Define your CPV scope. Identify the CPV codes that describe what you sell, then expand to adjacent codes so nothing relevant slips through.
Set geographic and value filters. Decide which countries and regions you can realistically serve and which contract sizes are worth pursuing.
Establish a daily review rhythm. New notices appear constantly. A weekly check misses short deadlines, so the review needs to be frequent and consistent.
Triage fast. Most matching notices will still be irrelevant on closer reading. The skill is filtering a long list down to the few worth a serious bid decision.

The bottleneck is rarely access to TED. It is the time it takes to separate the handful of genuinely relevant tenders from the noise, and to repeat that every working day.

TED vs. national procurement portals

The most common misconception about TED is that it shows you everything. It does not. TED is comprehensive for above-threshold tenders, but a large share of public procurement happens below the thresholds, and those tenders never reach TED. They are published instead on national, regional, and sector-specific portals.

	TED	National / regional portals
Scope	Above EU thresholds	Mostly below threshold, plus duplicates of above-threshold
Coverage	All 27 member states, one source	One country, region, or sector each
Legal basis	EU directives, mandatory	National procurement law
Languages	All official EU languages	Usually the local language
Format	Standardized eForms	Varies widely by platform
Completeness	Strong for high-value contracts	Where most below-threshold volume lives

This is the structural problem for any supplier. To see the full market you need TED and the relevant national platforms and the regional ones and the sector-specific ones. Across Europe there are over 4,500 such platforms. TED is one essential source, not the whole picture. This fragmentation is the core reason e-procurement discovery is so time-consuming.

How Patterno fits in

This is the gap Patterno was built to close. Patterno Hit aggregates TED together with national, regional, and sector-specific portals, over 4,500 platforms across Europe, into a single qualified search. Instead of checking TED plus a dozen other portals every morning, you receive only the tenders that genuinely match your profile, evaluated individually rather than matched on keywords alone. Once a relevant tender surfaces, Patterno Bid helps analyze the full document set so your team can reach a faster bid or no-bid decision. The decision stays with you; the platform removes the manual scanning.

To see how this works against your own CPV scope, book a free intro call.

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Frequently asked questions

What does TED stand for?

TED stands for Tenders Electronic Daily. It is the official online database of the European Union for public procurement notices, published by the EU Publications Office as the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union. It is unrelated to TED Talks.

Is TED free to use?

Yes. TED is accessible free of charge at ted.europa.eu. Anyone can search, read, download, and reuse the notices, and notices are available in all official EU languages. The data is also published in machine-readable formats for automated processing.

What is published on TED?

TED publishes public procurement notices for contracts above the EU thresholds: prior information notices for upcoming opportunities, contract notices that open a procedure for bids, and contract award notices recording the outcome. The thresholds and publication obligation come from the EU procurement directives, including Directive 2014/24/EU.

Does TED contain all public tenders in Europe?

No. TED covers only tenders above the EU thresholds. A large share of public procurement happens below those thresholds and is published on national, regional, and sector-specific portals instead. To see the full market, suppliers need TED alongside the relevant national platforms, of which there are over 4,500 across Europe.

What are eForms on TED?

eForms is the EU standard for electronic procurement notices, in force since October 2023. It restructures notice data into a consistent, granular, machine-readable schema across all member states, replacing older notice forms. This makes it easier to filter, compare, and automatically process TED notices, working together with CPV codes that classify the subject of each contract.

How is TED different from national procurement portals?

TED is a single EU-wide source for above-threshold tenders from all 27 member states, in standardized eForms format and all official languages. National and regional portals each cover one country, region, or sector, mostly host below-threshold tenders, and use the local language and their own formats. The two are complementary, not interchangeable.