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Where to find architecture tenders in Europe: the official sources in 32 countries

TenderDesk · 29 Oct 2026 · 25 min read
Where to find architecture tenders in Europe: the official sources in 32 countries

Public architecture work in Europe is advertised on TED above the EU thresholds and on national portals below them. This guide shows how to search TED by CPV code and notice type, what the 2026–2027 thresholds mean, and which official source to watch in each of 32 European countries.

Every public architecture commission in Europe is advertised somewhere official, but not in one place. Contracts above the EU thresholds go to TED, the EU's tender journal, and to a national portal. Everything smaller appears only on the national portal, a regional platform or the buyer's own profile. The United Kingdom and Switzerland run their own systems, and Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein publish through TED under the EEA Agreement. A practice that searches only TED sees the larger end of the market and misses most of the small and mid-sized work where new firms win their first references.

This guide explains how to search both layers: how to filter TED for design work, what the 2026–2027 thresholds mean for what you will find, where the e-procurement platforms fit in, and which official source to watch in each of the 32 countries TenderDesk covers, followed by the early signals, the award notices and a weekly routine for a small office. For where the work is and how the market is moving, see the European architecture tender market in 2026; this guide is about how to find it.

Key points

  • TED publishes every procedure above the EU thresholds in the EU and the EEA, more than 3,000 notices each working day, free to search. Since 25 October 2023 notices are sent as eForms, which makes the notice type, the CPV code, the lots and the buyer type searchable fields.
  • The 2026–2027 thresholds, net of VAT, are €140,000 for services and design contests bought by central government, €216,000 for those bought by regional and local authorities and other public bodies, €432,000 for utilities and €5,404,000 for works. An architecture fee below them will usually never reach TED.
  • Search by CPV code and by notice type. The core architecture codes are the 71200000 family, with 71400000 for urban planning and landscape; the umbrella codes 71000000 and 71300000 catch multidisciplinary appointments. Design contests have their own notice type, and a CPV search alone misses many of them.
  • Below the thresholds, each country has its own portal and its own advertising limits, such as €50,000 for services in Ireland, €90,000 for a BOAMP notice in France and PLN 170,000 in Poland. Documents and submissions are on the e-procurement platform named in the notice, which is often not where you found it.
  • The United Kingdom publishes on Find a Tender under the Procurement Act 2023, with Contracts Finder kept only for procurements started under the old regulations. Switzerland publishes on simap.ch, relaunched in July 2024 as the official publication organ for the Confederation, cantons and communes.
  • Prior information notices and market consultations show projects months before the call; award notices show who won, against how many bidders and often for what fee.

Two layers: TED and the national portals

The EU procurement directives create a simple rule with untidy results. Above the thresholds, a buyer in a member state must send its notice to the Publications Office of the EU, which publishes it on TED. It may also publish nationally, but under Article 52 of Directive 2014/24/EU not before TED has published, unless the Office has not confirmed publication within 48 hours; and the national notice may not say anything the EU notice does not. So for an above-threshold procedure, TED is complete and authoritative, and the national notice is a copy.

Below the thresholds, the directives do not apply. National law decides whether, where and from what value a contract must be advertised, and the answers differ widely. France requires publication in the BOAMP or a legal-notices journal for services from €90,000 net. Ireland requires advertising on eTenders from €50,000 for services. Spain requires every tender of every public body to appear on the national Plataforma de Contratación, directly or through a regional platform. Poland's procurement law applies from PLN 170,000 net since 1 January 2026. In most countries a small study or feasibility commission can still be awarded after a few quotes with no public notice at all. EU law adds one general duty: a contract below the thresholds that is of "certain cross-border interest" must still be advertised in a way that gives firms from other member states a fair chance, as the Commission's 2006 interpretative communication explains, but it leaves the channel to the buyer.

The practical consequence is that the national portal is the only complete source for each country, and TED is the only common source across all of them. A practice working in two or three countries needs both: TED for the larger commissions and the design contests, the national portals for the rest.

The thresholds were revised by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2152 and its sister regulations for utilities and concessions. They apply to procedures launched from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027.

Contract Threshold (net of VAT)
Services and design contests, central government authorities €140,000
Services and design contests, sub-central authorities (regions, municipalities, other public bodies) €216,000
Services and design contests, utilities (water, energy, transport, postal) €432,000
Works €5,404,000
Social and other specific services €750,000

Three points decide whether a commission reaches TED.

First, the test is the value of the service contract, which for an architect means the fee, not the construction budget. A €2 million school extension with a full design fee of about €200,000 sits below the sub-central threshold and will normally be advertised only nationally.

Second, the buyer's status matters. Central government means the ministries and national bodies listed in Annex I of the directive; universities, hospitals, housing companies and municipalities are sub-central and use the higher figure. A national ministry's €150,000 study goes to TED; a city's does not.

Third, the value of a design contest includes the prizes and payments to participants and, where the notice reserves it, the follow-on service contract. Many realisation competitions for public buildings are therefore above the threshold and on TED, even where the prize fund alone is modest. Germany has, since 2023, added the fees of all planning disciplines on a project together for this test, which pushes most multidisciplinary appointments above the line; the German guide explains how.

The UK and Switzerland set their own thresholds. UK thresholds from 1 January 2026 include VAT: £135,018 for central government services, £207,720 for other authorities and £5,193,000 for works. Swiss cantons and communes must use an open or selective procedure for services from CHF 250,000, may invite firms without publication between CHF 150,000 and that figure, and may award directly below CHF 150,000; the Confederation has its own scale.

TED: what it publishes

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) is the online supplement to the Official Journal of the EU, run by the Publications Office. It carries procurement notices from the 27 member states, from Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein under the EEA Agreement, and a small number from other countries and from EU institutions. Search is free; an EU Login account adds saved searches and alerts. Notices are available in all 24 official EU languages for their key fields, with machine translation of the full text, but the tender documents stay in the buyer's language.

Since 25 October 2023, under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1780, notices must be sent as eForms: structured XML records rather than filled-in standard forms. The last old-format notices went through in January 2024. For searching, the notice type, the procedure, the CPV codes of each lot, the estimated value, the award criteria and the buyer's legal type are all separate fields, so a well-built search can isolate design work far more precisely than the old standard forms allowed.

The notice types an architecture practice should know:

eForms notice type What it tells you
Prior information notice, for information only A planned procurement, up to twelve months ahead
Prior information notice used as a call for competition The call itself, for some regional and local buyers: if you do not express interest, you are not invited
Notice of a prior information notice on a buyer profile The real PIN sits on the buyer's own website
Pre-market consultation notice The buyer is consulting the market before writing the brief
Contract or concession notice The standard call for tenders or requests to participate
Design contest notice A competition, open or restricted, under Articles 78 to 82 of the directive
Contract award notice Who won, how many tenders were received, and usually the value
Design contest result notice The winners of a competition and their prizes
Contract modification notice A signed contract has been extended or changed

Searching TED well

TED offers quick, advanced and expert search, and browsing by business sector (CPV), place of performance (NUTS region or country) and type of opportunity. Advanced search is enough for most practices; expert search lets you combine any of roughly 1,300 fields with AND, OR and other operators and save the query.

CPV codes for architecture and design

The Common Procurement Vocabulary, set by Regulation (EC) 213/2008, gives every notice at least one eight-digit code. Buyers choose the codes themselves, inconsistently, so a good search uses a family of codes rather than one.

Code Label How to use it
71200000 Architectural and related services Core; always include
71210000 Advisory architectural services Studies, briefing, feasibility
71220000 Architectural design services Core
71221000 Architectural services for buildings Core; the most common code for a building commission
71222000 Architectural services for outdoor areas Public space, squares, school grounds
71223000 Architectural services for building extensions Extensions
71230000 Organisation of architectural design contests Usually the competition organiser's contract, not the competition itself
71240000 Architectural, engineering and planning services Multidisciplinary and lead-designer appointments
71250000 Architectural, engineering and surveying services Similar, with surveying
71400000 Urban planning and landscape architectural services Masterplans, landscape
71410000 Urban planning services Urban design, regeneration frameworks
71420000 Landscape architectural services Parks, landscape
71000000 Architectural, construction, engineering and inspection services Umbrella; catches full design-team appointments coded at the top level
71300000 Engineering services Umbrella; some general design appointments sit here
79932000 Interior design services Fit-out and interiors

List the codes you want explicitly rather than relying on a parent code to catch its children. Treat 71300000, 71500000 (construction-related services) and 71520000 (construction supervision) as secondary: some notices under them are design commissions, many are site supervision or inspection. And exclude division 45 (construction work) unless you are looking for design-and-build teams to join, because a works notice for a school will otherwise bury the design notice for the same school.

Filter by notice type, not only by code

A design contest is published as a design contest notice, and the buyer may code it 71200000, 71221000, 71230000 or something else entirely. The reliable filter is the notice type. Run one search for design contest notices in your countries with no CPV filter at all, and one for contract notices with the architecture codes. Add prior information notices as a third search if you want early warning, and contract award and design contest result notices as a fourth if you want market intelligence.

Place, buyer type and value

Filter by country or NUTS region of performance rather than by the buyer's address: a national housing agency in Lisbon may procure a project in the Algarve. Filtering by buyer legal type separates central government from local authorities and bodies governed by public law. Read the lots: a framework worth €6 million may contain six regional lots of €1 million, one of which is the right size for your office, and the headline value hides that.

Keywords in the local language

Titles and descriptions are written in the buyer's language. Add free-text terms such as maîtrise d'œuvre and concours (French), Objektplanung and Planungswettbewerb (German), progettazione and concorso di progettazione (Italian), redacción de proyecto and concurso de proyectos (Spanish), projeto and concurso de conceção (Portuguese), architectenselectie and prijsvraag (Dutch). Each country page lists the local terms used there.

Save, alert and reuse

With an account, TED lets you save up to 25 searches, attach an email alert to each and generate RSS feeds from them; you can also set an alert on a single notice to be told when a related notice, such as a corrigendum or the award, is published. For larger volumes the Publications Office provides a free search API and daily and monthly bulk downloads in XML, which is how specialist tools read TED. TenderDesk's feed reads TED several times a day alongside national sources, merges duplicates and scores each notice for how much real design work it contains, but the official search remains the reference and costs nothing.

Below the thresholds: national portals, buyer profiles and platforms

Three kinds of official site sit under TED, and they are easy to confuse.

The national notice portal is where a country's notices are published, usually free and searchable, sometimes with alerts: the BOAMP in France, TenderNed in the Netherlands, Doffin in Norway, Hilma in Finland. In some countries it is the only legally valid publication below the thresholds; in others it is a gathering point fed by many platforms.

The buyer profile is the buyer's own procurement page, defined in Annex VIII of the directive. It may carry prior information notices, current calls, awards and cancelled procedures, and some buyers publish their small procedures nowhere else.

The e-procurement platform is where the documents are downloaded, questions asked and bids submitted. Electronic communication has been mandatory for above-threshold procedures since 18 October 2018, and many countries now require it below the thresholds too. In some countries the platform is national and public (Lithuania's CVP IS, Croatia's EOJN RH, Cyprus's eProcurement System); in others each buyer chooses among licensed platforms, private or public, and the notice names the one to use. You will register on several. Article 53 of the directive requires the documents of an above-threshold procedure to be available free of charge, unrestricted and directly online from the date of the notice; some platforms still ask you to register, but none may charge you to read the brief.

Country by country: the official sources

The table lists, for each of the 32 countries, the official place where public architecture notices are published and the professional body that sets rules for, endorses or publishes design competitions. Above the EU or EEA thresholds, every country in the table except the UK and Switzerland also publishes on TED. Each country name links to its country page, with the open notices, the local terms and the procedures.

Country Official notice source Documents and submission Professional body involved in competitions
France BOAMP; services from €90,000 net in BOAMP or a legal-notices journal Buyer's profile; PLACE for the State —
Germany oeffentlichevergabe.de for EU-wide notices; federal and state platforms below the thresholds Platform named in the notice State chambers of architects
Italy ANAC's national public contracts database (ANAC), the legal publication since 2024 Certified e-procurement platforms National Council of Architects (CNAPPC) and local orders
Spain Plataforma de Contratación del Sector Público, which also aggregates regional platforms National or regional platform Colegios de Arquitectos
United Kingdom Find a Tender; Public Contracts Scotland Buyer's e-tendering system RIBA Competitions
Netherlands TenderNed TenderNed or the buyer's platform —
Belgium Bulletin der Aanbestedingen / Bulletin des Adjudications on e-Procurement e-Procurement Flemish Government Architect (Open Oproep)
Switzerland simap.ch simap.ch SIA (rules 142 and 143)
Portugal Diário da República and BASE Licensed platform named in the notice Ordem dos Arquitectos
Luxembourg Portail des marchés publics and the press Portail des marchés publics —
Poland Biuletyn Zamówień Publicznych on e-Zamówienia, from PLN 170,000 e-Zamówienia or the platform named SARP
Romania SEAP (e-licitatie.ro) SEAP Order of Architects (OAR)
Austria No single portal: core data on data.gv.at, searchable on the USP Buyer's platform Chamber, on architekturwettbewerb.at
Ireland eTenders, from €50,000 for services eTenders RIAI
Denmark udbud.dk System named in the notice Akademisk Arkitektforening
Norway Doffin System named in the notice NAL
Sweden Registered advertisement databases, listed by the Competition Authority System named in the notice Sveriges Arkitekter
Finland Hilma (hankintailmoitukset.fi) System named in the notice SAFA
Czechia Věstník veřejných zakázek NEN for central government; buyer profiles Czech Chamber of Architects (ČKA)
Slovakia Vestník verejného obstarávania of the ÚVO Platform named in the notice Slovak Chamber of Architects (SKA)
Hungary Közbeszerzési Értesítő; procedures on EKR EKR Hungarian Chamber of Architects
Slovenia Portal javnih naročil e-JN ZAPS
Croatia EOJN RH (eojn.hr) EOJN RH HKA rules, often run by UHA
Greece KIMDIS, the central registry of public contracts ESIDIS (public works subsystem for design studies) TEE and SADAS-PEA
Cyprus eProcurement System eProcurement System ETEK
Bulgaria CAIS EOP (app.eop.bg) CAIS EOP Chamber of Architects (KAB)
Malta ePPS (etenders.gov.mt) ePPS Kamra tal-Periti
Estonia Riigihangete register (riigihanked.riik.ee) Riigihangete register Estonian Association of Architects
Latvia Procurement Monitoring Bureau (IUB) EIS, the Electronic Procurement System Latvian Association of Architects
Lithuania CVP IS (viesiejipirkimai.lt) CVP IS Chamber of Architects approves conditions
Iceland Útboðsvefur, run by Fjársýsla ríkisins Buyer's system Architects Association of Iceland
Liechtenstein Official publication media of the national administration, in German As stated in the notice —

Notes on the larger markets

France has one of the largest volumes of design work in the table. The BOAMP carries both national and EU notices, but documents and submission sit on the buyer's profile, and there are dozens of platforms; the State's own is PLACE. Since April 2026 services under €60,000 net can be awarded without advertising, so the smallest missions never reach the BOAMP.

Germany's federal Datenservice Öffentlicher Einkauf has gathered all EU-wide notices since 2023 and forwards them to TED; below-threshold notices are spread across the federal and sixteen state systems. The state chambers of architects each publish the competitions they have registered, which is the most reliable list of German competitions.

Italy moved all procurement onto certified digital platforms on 1 January 2024. Legal publication runs through ANAC's national database, which replaced the Gazzetta Ufficiale for this purpose and forwards above-threshold notices to TED. Each buyer still uses its own certified platform for documents and bids.

Spain's Law 9/2017 lets the autonomous communities run their own platforms, as Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country do, provided every tender and its result also reaches the national Plataforma, directly or by aggregation. The Plataforma is therefore the one search that covers them all.

Austria has no single portal: buyers publish on their own platforms and provide core data on data.gv.at, and the government's business service portal, the USP, searches every notice published under the Federal Procurement Act in one place.

Sweden is the exception to the national-portal rule. Under its procurement statistics law, notices must be advertised in a database registered with the Swedish Competition Authority, and the registered databases are privately run. The Authority publishes the list; TED remains the free common source for the larger contracts.

The United Kingdom after the Procurement Act 2023

The UK left TED at the end of 2020, and since 1 January 2021 its above-threshold notices have gone to Find a Tender. Since 24 February 2025 new procurements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland follow the Procurement Act 2023, and Find a Tender became the central digital platform for all of them: every notice under the Act, from the pipeline notice to the contract details notice, including the below-threshold notices that previously went to Contracts Finder. Search and alerts are free, and supplier registration on the same platform is required before you can be awarded a contract.

Contracts Finder is still online, but only for procurements started under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015: awards under old-regime frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems, and below-threshold contracts awarded under those regulations. A new opportunity in 2026 will be on Find a Tender. Scotland keeps its own law and Public Contracts Scotland; Sell2Wales and eTendersNI feed the central platform and republish from it.

The Act's notices are numbered, which helps searching. The UK1 pipeline notice lists contracts over £2 million that an authority expecting to spend more than £100 million a year plans to procure in the next 18 months, published within 56 days of the start of the financial year. UK2 is the preliminary market engagement notice, UK3 the planned procurement notice, UK4 the tender notice, UK6 the contract award notice and UK7 the contract details notice. Below the thresholds, a contract is notifiable from £12,000 including VAT for central government and £30,000 for other authorities. Design competitions for universities, trusts and private clients that are not public procurements are run through RIBA Competitions. The UK guide covers procedures, frameworks and registration.

Switzerland: simap.ch

Switzerland applies the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and its bilateral agreement with the EU, not the directives, and publishes on simap.ch. The new platform went live on 1 July 2024, and the old one closed at the end of that year. Simap is the official publication organ for the Confederation and for the cantons that have adopted it; Vaud, for example, dropped its obligation to publish in the official gazette from the same date. Bidders register once to download documents and to use the question forum attached to each procedure.

Because cantons and communes may invite firms without publication up to CHF 250,000 for services, the smaller end of the Swiss market is reached through invitation lists and local relationships. The larger commissions, and the public project competitions under SIA 142 and parallel study commissions under SIA 143, are on simap in German, French or Italian depending on the region. Only a small share of Swiss notices also appears on TED, so simap is the source to watch.

Early signals: prior information, market consultation and pipelines

A contract notice can give you as little as 30 days. A prior information notice can give you a year. Under Article 48 of the directive a buyer may announce its planned procurements up to twelve months ahead, and it often does so for large or recurrent programmes: school building programmes, framework renewals, university estates plans. Two variants deserve attention. Regional and local buyers may use a prior information notice as the call for competition itself for a restricted or negotiated procedure, inviting firms to express interest; the buyer then invites only those who did, without any further notice. If you miss the PIN, you miss the commission. And a buyer may publish its PIN on its own buyer profile and send TED only a short notice saying so; that short notice is your pointer to the buyer's website.

Article 40 allows buyers to consult the market before a procedure, and eForms has a pre-market consultation notice for it. For design work these consultations are where a buyer tests a framework structure, a lot split or a competition format, and where a practice can say that a reference requirement or turnover floor would exclude small offices. Taking part does not commit you, and under Article 41 it does not disqualify you as long as the buyer shares with all bidders what it learned.

Beyond notices, the official pipeline signals are budgets and plans: municipal capital programmes, university estates strategies, national housing and school programmes, and the annual procurement plans some laws require buyers to publish.

Award notices as market intelligence

Every above-threshold contract award must be published within 30 days of signature, under Article 50, and every design contest result within 30 days of its closure. These notices are the most under-used free data in public procurement. An eForms award notice names the winner or winners, gives the value of the contract and often the number of tenders received, and identifies whether the winner is an SME; some also give the lowest and highest tender values. A design contest result notice names the prize-winners.

Read them for four things. Who wins in your building types and regions: your competitors and possible partners. How many firms bid, which tells you how crowded a buyer's procedures are and whether a lot is worth chasing. What fees were awarded, which tells you more about a buyer's real budget than its estimate does. And which frameworks were let and to whom, because call-offs under a framework are not published individually: once a framework is awarded, the work behind it disappears from view for up to four years.

Contract modification notices complete the picture: a commission extended to new phases will not be advertised again. For a practice looking for teaming partners, award notices are the most direct list of firms with a matching reference, as is the practices directory. The go/no-go guide shows how to turn bidder counts and fee levels into a decision.

A routine for a small practice

A five-to-twenty-person office cannot read every portal every day and does not need to. About two hours a week covers most of what matters.

  1. Set up four saved searches on TED for your countries: contract notices with the architecture CPV family; design contest notices with no CPV filter; prior information notices with the same codes; award and design contest result notices for intelligence. Turn on email alerts for the first two.
  2. Register on the national portal of each country you work in and set its alerts with the local CPV codes and keywords. In a federal or regional country, add the two or three regional platforms that matter to you.
  3. Bookmark the buyer profiles of the ten buyers most likely to commission your kind of work: the city, the region, the universities, the housing companies.
  4. Follow the competition listings of the chamber or association in each country; they often carry competitions in more detail and with jury information.
  5. Twice a week, read the new notices and decide within days, using a written go/no-go score rather than instinct. A team takes two weeks to form.
  6. Once a month, read the award notices in your sectors and record winner, fee, number of bidders and buyer in a simple sheet. After a year you will know your market better than most competitors.
  7. Once a quarter, check for prior information notices and market consultations from your key buyers, and respond to the consultations that matter.
  8. Keep a standing administrative pack (ESPD, insurance certificates, references) ready, so that a good notice found late is still answerable; the admin pack guide lists what goes in it.

A feed that gathers TED and the national sources in one list shortens steps 1, 2 and 5, but the routine is the same with or without one.

Common mistakes

  • Searching TED alone. Below the thresholds, which covers most small and mid-sized design fees, TED shows nothing.
  • Ignoring prior information notices. Where a PIN is the call for competition, there will be no second notice.
  • Confusing the notice site with the submission platform. The documents and the bid are on the platform named in the notice; register early, because some platforms take days to validate an account.
  • Skipping award notices. They are free intelligence on competitors, partners, fees and frameworks.

Checklist

  • Thresholds noted: €140,000 / €216,000 for services, €5,404,000 for works, net of VAT (UK and Swiss figures separately)
  • TED account created; four saved searches with alerts (contract notices, design contests, PINs, awards)
  • CPV family listed: 71200000 and its sub-codes, the 71400000 family, and 71000000 and 71300000 as umbrellas
  • Construction works (division 45) excluded unless looking for design-and-build partners
  • National portal registration and alerts for each target country
  • Regional platforms and key buyer profiles bookmarked
  • Chamber or association competition listings followed
  • Accounts open on the e-procurement platforms your buyers use
  • Award notices logged monthly: winner, fee, bidders, buyer
  • Administrative pack ready to submit at short notice

Frequently asked questions

Are all public architecture tenders in Europe published on TED?

No. Only procedures above the EU thresholds must be published on TED, which in 2026 and 2027 means design fees above €140,000 for central government buyers and €216,000 for other public buyers, net of VAT. Smaller contracts appear only on national portals or buyer profiles, if they are advertised at all. UK notices are on Find a Tender and Swiss notices on simap.ch.

The 71200000 family (71200000, 71210000, 71220000, 71221000, 71222000, 71223000, 71240000, 71250000), the 71400000 family for urban planning and landscape, and the umbrella codes 71000000 and 71300000 for multidisciplinary appointments. Add 79932000 for interiors. Search design contests separately by notice type, because they are coded inconsistently.

How do I find design competitions in Europe?

Above the thresholds, filter TED by the design contest notice type, without a CPV filter. Below them, watch the national portal and the competition listings of the chamber or association of architects in each country, which publish or endorse many competitions. UK competitions for private and charitable clients run through RIBA Competitions.

What replaced Contracts Finder in the UK?

Find a Tender. Since 24 February 2025 every notice under the Procurement Act 2023, including below-threshold opportunities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is published there. Contracts Finder remains only for procurements started under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland.

Why can I not download the documents from the notice site?

Because the notice portal and the e-procurement platform are often different systems. The notice names the platform where the documents are available and the bids are submitted. For above-threshold procedures the documents must be free and directly accessible from the date of the notice, though the platform may ask you to register.

Sources