How to bid on public tenders in Austria

Austrian public tenders are listed in the tender search on the Unternehmensserviceportal (USP), and tenders above the EU thresholds also appear on TED. Authorities publish their notices as Kerndaten (core data), with the metadata listed on data.gv.at, and since 1 October 2026 these must use the EU eForms format, also below the EU thresholds.

There is no single bidding platform, so you submit on the e-procurement platform each authority chooses, for example those of Bundesbeschaffung GmbH (BBG), the BIG Vergabeportal or the provia Bieterportal. Above the EU thresholds communication must be electronic, with qualified electronic signatures or seals or equivalent assurance.

Public contracts of federal, regional and local authorities in Austria follow the Bundesvergabegesetz 2018 (BVergG 2018, Federal Procurement Act), amended by the Vergaberechtsgesetz 2026 (BGBl. I Nr. 8/2026) with most changes applying since 1 March 2026. The national limits that used to be extended by the Schwellenwerteverordnung (threshold regulation) are now written into the act itself.

Contract	Limit
EU threshold, works	EUR 5,404,000
EU threshold, supplies and services (central / Länder and municipalities)	EUR 140,000 / 216,000
Direktvergabe (direct award), works / supplies and services	below EUR 200,000 / 140,000
Direct award with prior notice or non-open procedure without notice, works	below EUR 2,000,000

Above EUR 50,000, an authority making a direct award must try to obtain at least three offers or price quotes unless objective reasons prevent it. Utilities (Sektorenauftraggeber) have their own limits, for example EUR 150,000 for direct awards of supplies and services.

Austrian authorities must reject (ausscheiden) any bid that meets one of the grounds in § 141 BVergG, so formal errors usually end a bid. The grounds include late bids, bids that contradict the tender documents, unpermitted variants, missing proof of a required deposit (Vadium) and defective or incomplete bids whose defects were not or cannot be remedied.

Since the 2026 reform, your reliability and your financial and technical capacity only have to exist by the deadline the authority sets for submitting or completing evidence or for remedying defects (§ 79 BVergG), rather than at bid opening. The reform also allows an authority to reject a bid without asking for clarification if the bid makes no reference at all to suitability (§ 138 BVergG).

Unless the tender documents say otherwise, the bid and all attachments, including certificates, must be in German and priced in euro (§ 125 BVergG). Start translating references and technical documents early.

Suitability can be declared with the ESPD (Einheitliche Europäische Eigenerklärung), but above the EU thresholds the authority must ask the winning bidder for the evidence before the award, such as a criminal record certificate, a company register extract and tax and social security clearance. Foreign companies may use equivalent home-country documents, and where these are not issued the authority can accept a sworn declaration. Any company can register in the Liste geeigneter Unternehmen run by the Auftragnehmerkataster Österreich (ANKÖ), an online evidence database that authorities can check directly, for EUR 78.50 to 336.50 per year plus VAT depending on company size.

If your activity needs an Austrian official decision on your professional qualifications, you must apply for it before the bid deadline and should hold it by the award decision, otherwise the bid must be rejected (§§ 21 and 141 BVergG). For regulated trades (reglementierte Gewerbe), EU, EEA and Swiss companies providing temporary cross-border services file a notification, renewed once a year, with the Federal Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism (BMWET).

Posted workers fall under the Lohn- und Sozialdumping-Bekämpfungsgesetz (LSD-BG, Anti-Wage and Social Dumping Act). EU, EEA and Swiss employers must report each posting on form ZKO3 to the Ministry of Finance’s central coordination office (ZKO) before work starts, keep A1 forms available and keep wage records in German or English on site. Fines for underpaying Austrian minimum pay rise with the amount withheld and can reach EUR 400,000, and contracting authorities must check the LSD-BG penalty records of bidders and their subcontractors before the award.

After the award decision (Zuschlagsentscheidung), the contract may not be signed during a standstill period of 10 days for electronic notice or 15 days by post. Call-offs under framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems have no standstill period.

Review goes to the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court) for federal authorities and to the Landesverwaltungsgericht of the relevant Land for Länder and municipalities. Under the federal rules you have 10 days from electronic notice or publication (15 days by post) to apply, and the flat fee currently ranges from EUR 400 to EUR 50,000 depending on contract value. Challenge unclear or unlawful tender documents early: the deadline is extended to 7 days before the bid deadline when the bid period is longer than 17 days, and once it has passed you can no longer rely on those defects after losing the award.