analysis
contracts expiring in the next 12 months
30,973 UK public sector contracts have an end date in the next 12 months, across 2,695 buying organisations. Neither Contracts Finder nor Find a Tender publishes this: they record what has been advertised, not what is about to fall due.
These are contract end dates as published on the original notice. An end date is not a commitment to re-tender — a contract may be extended, varied, or allowed to lapse without replacement, and many are. What it is, is the earliest public signal that work may return to market, which is why it is worth watching well before anything is advertised.
Not every contract records one: this covers the 30,973 that do and whose date falls inside the window.
when they fall
| quarter | contracts ending | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 Q3 | 2,446 | |
| 2026 Q4 | 7,116 | |
| 2027 Q1 | 10,039 | |
| 2027 Q2 | 5,367 | |
| 2027 Q3 | 6,005 |
UK public sector contracts cluster heavily on the financial year, so the quarter containing 31 March is normally the largest by some margin. A spike there is the calendar, not a change in behaviour.
buyers with the most contracts ending
The 40 buyers with the most contracts ending, of those with at least 5. Counted by contracting process, so a tender and its award notice are one contract.
what is ending
- business and professional services 3,534
- software and information systems 3,109
- IT services 2,623
- construction work 2,620
- architecture and engineering 2,098
- health and social care 2,077
- transport services 1,817
- education and training 1,586
- vehicles and transport equipment 1,382
- repair and maintenance 1,220
- waste, cleaning and environment 901
- finance and insurance 658
ending in the next 90 days
The largest contract ending on each day, one row per day. 8,438 contracts end inside this window in total — far too many to list, and a flat cut of the first thirty would only ever have shown a single day.
how this was counted
Contract end dates published on notices from Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Counts are of contracting processes, not published notices: a tender and its award notice are one contract and are counted once.
There is no total value on this page. A published value exists for 28,212 of these 30,973 contracts once framework ceilings are excluded, and a ceiling states a spending limit shared across every supplier on the framework rather than a sum anyone received — so a total here would be dominated by figures nobody spent. The direct awards page does total values, and says there why that population is the one case where it is defensible.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.