How to bid for public tenders in Finland.

Finland at a glance

Who buys:

• Hansel is the central purchasing body. It runs framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems for central government and, since a merger, municipalities too.
• Regional central purchasing bodies also tender for wellbeing-services counties and cities.

HILMA comes first: a notice can’t appear anywhere else before it’s published there.

The 2026 reform

Act 519/2026 took effect on 18 June 2026. Procedures started before then follow the old rules.

From 18 June 2026:

• market consultation (or an assessment of alternatives) is mandatory above €10 million;
• buyers must publish award notices for national-level contracts;
• national notices may be published in additional languages;
• new exclusion grounds: aggravated accounting, environmental and nature-conservation offences, and evident security risks;
• subcontractors hit by mandatory exclusion grounds must be replaced;
• ineffectiveness and other sanctions now reach national-level works (from €150,000).

From 1 October 2026:

• EU-level contracts must be split into lots (or tendered in parts), unless the buyer gives reasons. A decision not to split can now be appealed.
• Single-bid rule. An EU-level open procedure that receives only one tender must be cancelled and re-run once. There are exceptions: where the buyer consulted the market, used lots, or has a weighty reason.

From 1 July 2027: buyers can use in-house companies only if they own at least 10% directly. That pushes more work to the open market.

Thresholds and procedures

National thresholds (unchanged), excluding VAT. Below them, the act doesn’t apply:

EU thresholds from 1 January 2026:

• EU-level procedures:
  • open, restricted (at least 5 invited), negotiated, competitive dialogue and innovation partnership;
  • direct awards only on listed grounds;
  • frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems, e-auctions and e-catalogues;
  • minimum 35 days for an open procedure (30 with electronic tenders).
• National procedures: the buyer designs its own procedure, consistent with the act’s principles, and describes it in the notice.
• Value and splitting. The value is the maximum payable excluding VAT, including options. Artificial splitting is banned.

Who can bid

• No nationality or residence requirement. You prove your right to operate with your home country’s registration, licence or a sworn statement.
• Equal treatment. EU, EEA and WTO GPA bidders must be treated on the same terms as Finnish ones. Bidders from countries without an EU agreement have no enforceable right after the EU Court’s Kolin ruling; see how companies from outside the EU can bid for EU tenders.
• Language:
  • the call must state the tender language; the law doesn’t fix one;
  • most calls are in Finnish or Swedish, and some buyers accept English where there’s international interest;
  • since June 2026, notices may also be published in other languages, naming the binding version.
• The ESPD. At EU level the ESPD is mandatory as preliminary evidence, completed electronically. That applies to you, each consortium member and each firm whose capacity you rely on. At national level the exclusion and selection rules apply unless the buyer says otherwise.
• Evidence:
  • criminal-record extracts from your home country, no older than 12 months, or a sworn declaration where none is issued;
  • minimum turnover requirements are capped at twice the contract value (per lot) unless justified.

Delivering in Finland: registrations and the Contractor’s Liability Act

• Contractor’s Obligations and Liability Act (tilaajavastuulaki). Before contracting for agency work or subcontracted work in Finland, the client must obtain documents no older than 3 months:

  • a trade register extract;
  • prepayment, employer and VAT register status;
  • tax-debt and pension-insurance certificates;
  • the applicable collective agreement or main employment terms;
  • occupational health care arrangements;
  • accident insurance, in construction.

  Foreign contractors provide home-country equivalents. The act is reported not to apply under €9,000 or to agency work of no more than 10 working days.

• Prepayment register. If you’re not in the Finnish prepayment register (ennakkoperintärekisteri), the client must withhold tax, unless you hold a tax-at-source card for the contract.

• VAT and employer registration. Check VAT registration in advance. With a permanent establishment and employees, you also join the employer register.

• Construction: workers must be entered in the tax-number register before starting work.

• Employment terms. Central government contracts, and all buyers’ works contracts, require at least Finnish statutory and collective-agreement minimum terms for work done in Finland.

Bidding, step by step

1. Check the value and regime: EU-level, national, or below the thresholds.
2. Find notices on HILMA, and on TED for EU-level contracts. Set up search watches and follow prior information notices.
3. Open the call in the named system, usually Cloudia / Tarjouspalvelu.fi (run by Mercell). Register a supplier account; free seats were limited to one per organisation in 2025, and extra seats are paid. You must bid in the channel the call names.
4. Check the language clause and ask in the Q&A whether English is accepted. If answers come later than 6 days before closing, the deadline must be extended.
5. Prepare the ESPD (EU level) and home-country evidence.
6. Plan Finnish delivery requirements: liability-act documents, prepayment register or tax-at-source card, VAT, and the tax-number register for construction.
7. Submit before the deadline. Don’t add your own terms or reservations; non-compliant tenders are excluded. Mark trade secrets, because documents are otherwise largely open to the parties.
8. Read the award decision. It comes with appeal and correction instructions.
9. Sign the written contract. A Finnish public contract is formed only by a separate written contract.

Securities and payment

• Securities are contractual. The act sets no statutory bid or performance security; buyers may require liability insurance.
• Works: contracts typically use the YSE 1998 general terms. They set security of about 10% of the price during construction and 2% during the warranty period.
• Payment: public buyers must pay within 30 days of the invoice. Up to 60 days is allowed only if expressly agreed and justified, and acceptance checks can’t delay payment beyond 30 days.
• Late-payment interest can’t be excluded or set below the statutory rate.
• E-invoicing. Buyers must accept EN 16931 e-invoices and can require them.

How bids are evaluated

• The standard: the most economically advantageous tender, judged on lowest price, lowest cost or best price-quality ratio.
• Lowest price alone must be justified for anything other than goods, and since 2026 also for social, health and specific services.
• Quality criteria can include social, environmental and innovation aspects, accessibility and staff qualifications. Weightings must be disclosed, and life-cycle costing is allowed. In Hansel tenders, price has typically weighed 40–70%.
• Unusually low tenders. The buyer must ask for an explanation, and must reject a bid whose low price comes from breaching environmental, social or labour obligations.
• SMEs benefit from the new mandatory lots rule. Contracts can also be reserved for sheltered workshops.

Challenging a decision

1. Correction request (hankintaoikaisu): ask the buyer to correct its decision within 14 days. It doesn’t pause the Market Court deadline, so file both if you need to.
2. Appeal to the Market Court (markkinaoikeus) within 14 days of receiving the decision and appeal instructions. Notify the buyer in writing no later than when you file.
   • Some decisions can’t be appealed, such as purely preparatory acts and the choice of lowest price as the sole criterion.
   • Framework call-offs need leave to appeal.
3. Court fees (from 2025), charged whatever the outcome:

4. Standstill and suspension:
   • the standstill is 14 days for EU-level procurements, social and health services and concessions, and 10 days for framework and dynamic-system call-offs;
   • there’s no standstill below the EU thresholds for goods, services and works;
   • above EU thresholds, the contract can’t be signed while an appeal is pending.
5. Remedies:
   • annulment or an order to correct;
   • compensation of normally up to 10% of the contract value, for a bidder who had a real chance;
   • ineffectiveness, penalty payments and shortened contracts.

What changed in 2025–2026

• 1 January 2025: Market Court fees indexed (€2,440 / €4,880 / €7,300).
• 2025: Cloudia introduced paid premium supplier seats, and an industry body complained to the competition authority.
• 1 January 2026: new EU thresholds (€140,000 / €216,000 / €5,404,000).
• 18 June 2026: Act 519/2026 took effect: market consultation above €10 million, national award notices, multilingual notices, new exclusion grounds, and sanctions extended to national-level works.
• 1 October 2026: mandatory lots and the single-bid re-tender rule at EU level.
• Coming 1 July 2027: in-house companies need at least a 10% ownership stake.
• Unchanged: the national thresholds.

Live Finnish tenders

See also how companies from outside the EU can bid for EU tenders and how to bid for EU public tenders on TED.

Questions

Sources

• Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts 1397/2016 (Finlex)
• Amending Act 519/2026 (Finnish Statute Book)
• HILMA: Finnish public procurement notices
• Hansel: becoming a supplier
• Finnish Tax Administration: foreign businesses in Finland

This guide explains the rules in plain English; it isn’t legal advice. Procurement rules change, and each tender document sets its own conditions — it always prevails.