By Vlad Nadymov 11 min read
IT tenders are public contracts for software, IT services and computer hardware. In the latest 12 months of our data, governments in 31 countries awarded 29,926 of them. Luxembourg gives 22% of its public contract awards to IT. Germany gives 5.8%, and the United Kingdom 2.4%.
Below is where government IT tenders are published and how large the IT share is in each country. Then come the buyers, the winners, and how open each market is to a new supplier. Every number comes from the award records behind Sell to State, after a hand check of the IT label in every country.
Where government IT tenders are published
In the European Union, most IT tenders above the EU thresholds appear on Tenders Electronic Daily (TED). Each TED notice carries a CPV code, and three parts of the CPV list cover IT:
- division 48, "Software package and information systems";
- division 72, "IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support";
- group 302, "Computer equipment and supplies".
Our TED guide shows how to search them.
Outside the EU, each country has its own portal. The United Kingdom publishes on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. Software tenders Australia-wide are on AusTender, which our AusTender guide explains. Singapore uses GeBIZ (guide), South Africa uses eTenders (guide) and Uzbekistan uses xarid (guide).
Online IT tenders are easy to find. Past winners are harder. A search for "IT software tenders" or "govt software tenders" returns lists of open notices. Few portals let you ask who won the last 50 IT contracts of one buyer. That question needs award data, and it is what the rest of this article answers.
IT tenders by country: the share of public contracts
IT's share of public contract awards ranges from 22.2% in Luxembourg to 1.0% in the Dominican Republic. After Luxembourg come Slovakia (12.9%), Spain (11.7%), the Czech Republic (9.7%) and Hungary (9.0%). Germany sits at 5.8%, Kenya at 3.5% and the United Kingdom at 2.4%.
Luxembourg has a special reason. EU bodies seated there, such as the European Investment Bank and Eurostat, gave 90 of its 232 IT awards. The largest single buyer is the national IT centre (CTIE), with 52.
The share also depends on what each source publishes. TED lists only contracts above the EU thresholds, so in TED countries the share describes the larger contracts. Contracts Finder, Kenya's PPIP and Tanzania's PPRA portal also list small purchases of every kind, which can push the IT share down. Read the ranking as "how much of what each country publishes is IT".
How many government IT contracts each country awards
Germany awarded the most public IT contracts: 4,546 in the latest 12 months. The Czech Republic follows with 3,239, Spain with 2,949, Australia with 2,191 and Portugal with 2,041. Uzbekistan awarded 941 contracts for software and IT services, and Israel 397.
A count of awards is a count of decisions, and one tender can produce many of them. A framework with 20 lots and several winners per lot appears as dozens of awards. In Spain, one framework for desktop computers produced 83 award records on 24 and 25 September 2025, shared by 14 suppliers. We come back to frameworks below.
Government software tenders: who buys the most
In most countries, a few central bodies buy a large part of the IT. In Spain, the central purchasing office of the Ministry of Finance (DGRCC) gave 575 of the 2,949 IT awards, to 90 different suppliers. In the Czech Republic, the Ministry of the Interior gave 270. In Germany, the federal procurement office of the interior ministry gave 135, and the federal IT centre ITZBund 85.
The United Kingdom spreads its IT buying. Its largest IT buyer on Contracts Finder, UK Shared Business Services, gave 21 awards. Councils, NHS bodies and agencies make up the rest.
Defence is the largest IT buyer in Australia. The Department of Defence gave 951 of the 2,191 Australian IT awards, 43% of the total.
For a supplier, the buyer list is the sales list. A central purchasing body runs frameworks that many smaller buyers use. An IT agency of a region or a ministry buys for its whole administration. Both are worth a direct relationship before the next tender opens.
Who wins government IT contracts: resellers and integrators
The suppliers with the most IT awards sell other companies' software and hardware, or integrate it. In Germany, SVA System Vertrieb Alexander won 159 IT awards from 75 buyers, Bechtle 132 from 79 and SoftwareONE 93 from 74. In Spain, Telefónica Soluciones won 201 from 79 buyers and Inetum 149 from 43. In the Czech Republic, Aricoma Systems won 209 from 71 buyers. In the United Kingdom, Softcat won 39 from 31 buyers, Phoenix Software 29 and Civica 24.
Uzbekistan is the exception. There, the largest IT supplier is a state enterprise: the Cybersecurity Center won 247 of the 941 software and IT services awards, from 56 buyers.
A reseller on dozens of buyers is a real supplier. Before we rank suppliers, we check the top 10 names of each country across all their contracts. A name that wins from hundreds of buyers in unrelated sectors is usually a data error, and we leave it out. In the IT scope, the widest names are resellers such as Softcat, which won 392 awards from 163 buyers in all sectors. Those are real businesses, so they stay in.
IT concentration compared with the whole market
The data suggests that IT is one of the more open public markets. We compared the share of awards that the top 1% of suppliers win in IT with the same share across all sectors. In 18 of the 20 countries with at least 500 IT awards, the top 1% of IT suppliers win a smaller share. In Lithuania the share falls from 20% to 8%, in Kenya from 15% to 5%. In Germany it is 13% in IT and 14% overall.
Slovakia and Portugal go the other way. In Slovakia, the top 1% of IT suppliers win 22% of IT awards, against 18% of all awards. In Portugal the figures are 23% and 22%.
A caution about this comparison. A country has fewer IT suppliers than suppliers in total, so its "top 1%" in IT is a handful of firms. Read the chart as a direction, and use the next section for the detail.
One-time winners and repeat winners in IT
In 29 of the 31 countries, most suppliers that won a public IT contract won only one. In Germany, 76% of the 2,556 IT suppliers won once. But the work still gathers at repeat winners in many markets. In Belgium, one-time winners hold 62% of the IT awards. In Spain they hold 11%, in the Czech Republic 10% and in Croatia 6%.
Across the 28 countries with a full window, one-time winners hold 27% of IT awards and 39% of the stated value. The value covers 25 countries, $39.5 billion. So suppliers that win one IT contract a year often win a large one.
Why these numbers differ from our earlier sector count. Our first data story gave IT 33% of awards and 49% of stated value for one-time winners. It used the keyword label. That label counted non-IT awards in the United Kingdom, Singapore, South Africa and Tanzania, which one-off suppliers win. It also missed most IT awards in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland and Latvia, where IT buyers return to the same suppliers. The audited scope gives 27% and 39%.
Software tenders, services tenders and hardware tenders
Most public IT awards buy services. In the 21 European countries where every award carries a CPV code, IT services are 48% of IT awards, computer hardware 30% and software 23%. The mix differs by country. Denmark buys IT services: 81% of its IT awards. Slovakia buys hardware: 70%. Poland (63%) and Bulgaria (53%) also buy mostly hardware.
For a software company, this split tells you where to look. A country that buys services runs development, support and operations tenders. A country that buys hardware runs supply tenders, where resellers compete on price and delivery.
Software development tenders and licence renewals
Software development tenders are a small part of the code list. Of the 23,272 IT awards with a CPV code, 2,153 carry a specific software development or programming code. Many more use the broad code for IT services, "consulting, software development, Internet and support", so the true number of development contracts is higher.
Licences are a large part of software tenders. 5,128 awards carry a software package or licence management code. Many of them renew products that the buyer already uses, from SAP, Microsoft, Oracle or VMware. A renewal asks for the same product, so the competition is between resellers of that product.
Frameworks and central purchasing in IT
A large share of IT buying goes through frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems. In the Czech Republic, 40% of IT award titles name a framework agreement or a dynamic purchasing system (DNS). In Germany the share is 18%, in Spain 13%. These are lower bounds, because many titles do not say how the contract was bought.
A framework decides who can win for years. The first competition picks the suppliers. Later call-offs go only to them. If your market runs on frameworks, the date when the next framework opens matters more than any single call-off.
UK titles say less. Only 4.5% of the UK IT award titles on Contracts Finder name a framework, and 4 of 616 name G-Cloud. UK buyers use national frameworks a lot, but their award titles rarely say so, so the UK share is a floor.
How to research an IT market before you bid
Use this procedure for one country and one kind of IT.
- Open the country page of the market, for example Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic or the United Kingdom.
- Search the awards for your product words and, in TED countries, for CPV codes 48, 72 and 302.
- List the buyers that awarded the most IT contracts in the last 12 months.
- For each buyer, read who won its last 20 IT awards.
- Note which awards are framework call-offs and when each framework ends.
- Export the list to CSV, or pull it through the API or the MCP server.
All 64 live countries are on the country list. Plans for the export, the API and the MCP server are on the pricing page.
How we counted
Records and windows
- One record is one contract award: a buyer, a supplier, a date and, where the source gives it, an amount. Each country gets its latest 12 months of data, the same windows as in our earlier data story. Australia and the Dominican Republic have a shorter window, and Tanzania an irregular one.
- We count each award once, even when our import stored it twice. We leave out awards with no supplier name, placeholder names and Slovenia. Suppliers are counted by normalised name, so a firm under two spellings counts twice, and every "won once" share is an upper bound.
What counts as IT
- In records with a CPV code, IT is CPV division 48, division 72, group 302, and computer repair and installation. We leave out telecoms and the general code for office machinery. We also leave out notices that name several countries, such as EU-institution and GÉANT frameworks.
- In Uzbekistan, IT is the product groups for software and IT services. Hardware shares a group with electronics there, so Uzbekistan's count is a lower bound. Elsewhere, we use our keyword label and remove the false matches we found.
- We read 50 to 60 random IT awards per country, twice. In the final scope, 83% to 100% of the sampled awards per country are IT. We leave out Ukraine and France, where the label fell below 80%, and Colombia, where 74% of all awards are personal-service contracts. Countries with fewer than 100 IT awards are also out.
Values and snapshot
- For value, we use the stated amount of each award in US dollars at the rates of 2 October 2026. We split one amount among the winners of one notice and cap each award at its country's 99.9th percentile. Many amounts are framework ceilings, so the money paid can be lower.
- The snapshot date is 2 October 2026. This research is based on the award data behind Sell to State.
Government IT contracts: the short version
Public IT buying is large and spread out. Most IT suppliers win one contract a year. In most countries, the top 1% of IT suppliers win less than the top 1% of all suppliers. The repeat winners are resellers and integrators, and the biggest buyers are central purchasing bodies and IT agencies. Luxembourg gives 22% of its public contract awards to IT. Germany gives 5.8%.
Download the charts
Free to reuse. Give a link to this article.
- V1 — Luxembourg gives 22% of its public contracts to IT. Germany, 5.8%. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V2 — Germany awarded the most public IT contracts: 4,546 in a year. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V3 — Who buys the most IT: central purchasing bodies and IT agencies. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V4 — Who wins the most IT contracts: resellers and integrators. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V5 — In 18 of 20 countries, IT is less concentrated than the whole market. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V6 — Belgium: 62% of IT contracts go to one-time winners. Croatia: 6%. (PNG, 2400 px)
- V7 — Denmark buys IT services (81%). Slovakia buys hardware (70%). (PNG, 2400 px)
