How long do public tenders give you to bid?

Published 1 September 2026 · updated 1 September 2026 · 4 min read

All figures cover notices published since 1 January 2026 and were measured against the Scalebiz database on 1 September 2026. They are not a snapshot of what is open today: counting only live notices quietly removes every short deadline, because those have already closed.

Short answer: it depends on the market far more than on the sector. On the same CPV code, a US construction notice gives you 14 days and a French one 41. Every page below states the measured window for one market and one sector, and compares it with the others.

How long these deadlines run, and what the law actually requires, is covered in our guide to tender response times.

The one number that decides whether you can bid

Every public tender has a closing date, and the useful question is not how many are open but how long the typical one gives you. Across 33,257 notices published since 1 January 2026 on TED, SAM.gov and UK Find a Tender, that answer is not one number. It is a spread wide enough to decide whether a market is usable by a small team at all.

Construction is CPV division 45 in every one of these markets. In the United States the median gives you 14 days; in France, 41. Medical equipment is division 33 everywhere: 7 days in the United States, 48 in Italy. Same category, same code, a different business.

What each page carries

Each page below states four measured facts for one market and one CPV division: how many notices the cohort holds, the median window from publication to close, the share closing within fourteen days, and how many publish a contract value. Every page also compares the same CPV code across the other markets that publish enough of it, because the comparison is what turns a number into a decision.

These are cohort figures, over every notice published since 1 January 2026 — open or long closed. Counting only what is open today quietly deletes every short deadline, because those already closed, and produces a median that grows the longer you leave it.

Markets and sectors

A section is published only where the cohort holds at least 100 notices. Below that, a median is a number you should not plan against, so the page does not exist.

United States — 23 sectors

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Construction	2,050	14 d	50%
Construction materials	1,893	11 d	68%
Transport equipment	1,576	11 d	62%
Industrial machinery	1,400	11 d	76%
Electrical equipment	1,314	12 d	59%
Laboratory equipment	800	8 d	84%
Business services	588	12 d	64%
Furniture	470	11 d	67%
Cleaning and waste	464	11 d	66%
Repair and maintenance	424	9 d	77%
Medical equipment	315	7 d	91%
Communications equipment	314	11 d	69%
Engineering and architecture	208	11 d	64%
Textiles and plastics	203	11 d	75%
It services	197	8 d	81%
Food and beverage	176	12 d	86%
Chemicals	172	11 d	72%
Health and social care	130	11 d	64%
Mining and metals	120	11 d	84%
Transport support	119	10 d	71%
Training	118	9 d	78%
Office and it equipment	105	7 d	82%
Postal and telecoms	102	11 d	65%

Poland — 10 sectors

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Medical equipment	655	24 d	35%
Construction	294	19 d	37%
Cleaning and waste	273	31 d	19%
Transport equipment	228	28 d	35%
Office and it equipment	196	30 d	31%
Engineering and architecture	154	30 d	27%
It services	121	19 d	37%
Energy	117	29 d	26%
Software	115	24 d	34%
Laboratory equipment	110	26 d	29%

France — 6 sectors

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Engineering and architecture	294	40 d	2%
Construction	263	41 d	5%
Cleaning and waste	181	40 d	4%
Repair and maintenance	156	40 d	4%
Insurance	152	45 d	1%
Business services	133	39 d	5%

Spain — 4 sectors

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Repair and maintenance	141	32 d	5%
Engineering and architecture	125	37 d	3%
Cleaning and waste	120	32 d	8%
Business services	106	35 d	3%

Czechia — 2 sectors

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Construction	150	29 d	17%
Medical equipment	146	32 d	11%

Romania — 1 sector

Sector	Notices	Median	14 days or less
Medical equipment	108	34 d	7%

United Kingdom

Find a Tender published 460 notices in this cohort against 18,344 on TED. That is not enough to split by sector honestly, so the UK is covered by one page for the whole market: median 31 days, 10% closing inside two weeks, and two thirds publishing a contract value.

What is not here yet

Germany. Seven German sections meet the threshold and are held back for one measured reason: in medical equipment, 68 of 130 German notices are open-house or dynamic purchasing arrangements running for years rather than single competitions. Until every German section separates those from real bidding windows, publishing them would report the wrong instrument.
Everything between 30 and 100 notices. A further 106 market-and-sector pairs hold between 30 and 99 notices. They are measurable but thinner, and they follow once these are proven.
Contract values in the United States. No US page can show one. The public layer of SAM.gov does not publish an estimated value at all, which is itself worth knowing before you buy a tool that claims otherwise.

This guide is one part of a bigger picture. For how this compares with the other routes — grants, tenders, guarantees, subsidised debt and equity — see business funding in the EU, US and UK.

See which of these you could actually bid for

Build a profile once and Scalebiz scores every open notice in the EU, the US and the UK against your capability, your codes and — critically — the time you have left.

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Measured on 1 September 2026 over 33,257 notices published since 1 January 2026 in the Scalebiz database, from TED, SAM.gov and UK Find a Tender — not over the notices open on that date. Source last checked 1 September 2026: Directive 2014/24/EU Article 27 in the consolidated version of 1 January 2024. Deadlines change; always confirm on the source portal before you rely on this.