TED

TED is the European Union's single source of truth for public procurement opportunities above EU thresholds. Every working day, it publishes hundreds of new notices from contracting authorities across the EU, EEA, and several accession countries. For bid teams targeting the European public sector, TED is the most important channel for high-value opportunities — and the primary alternative to fragmented national portals.

Each TED notice follows a standardised structure: CPV classification codes, estimated contract value, eligibility and selection criteria, deadlines, procedure type, and award criteria. The platform offers multiple ways to access this data — search filters in the web interface, downloadable XML and CSV feeds, and a public API. Most market intelligence tools, including Forgent.ai, ingest these feeds to surface relevant opportunities to subscribers in near real time.

TED hosts notices across the full procurement lifecycle. Prior Information Notices (PINs) signal upcoming opportunities, sometimes a year in advance. Contract Notices launch the live tender. Contract Award Notices, published after award, reveal the winning supplier, contract value, and number of bidders — a goldmine for competitive intelligence and capture planning on future re-tenders.

Since the introduction of eForms in late 2023, TED notices follow a more granular, machine-readable data model. This has been a major enabler for AI-driven bid platforms — structured fields make it possible to automate qualification, draft compliant responses, and benchmark prices across markets.

For bid teams, the discipline is not just discovering TED notices but qualifying them ruthlessly. Many opportunities are pre-wired to incumbents or unsuitable for a given supplier's profile. A clear bid/no-bid framework — informed by historical award data, CPV fit, and geographic capability — separates effective teams from those that waste capacity chasing unwinnable work. TED is the raw material; qualification is the value-add.