Scientific Research Government Tenders in Germany

Commissioning research capability, facilities and specialist analysis

Scientific research is bought in three distinguishable ways and the notices look similar. The first is a commissioned programme: the buyer defines a question and funds a team to investigate it. The second is access to capability -- beam time, vessel time, controlled environment facilities, computing -- where the buyer is purchasing time on an asset it cannot justify owning. The third is routine analytical service, where samples are sent and results returned against a method and a turnaround. Each has different qualification and different economics.

Quality assurance is the recurring requirement. Laboratories are expected to hold accreditation for the specific methods in scope, participate in proficiency testing, maintain traceable calibration and documented chain of custody for samples, and report uncertainty alongside results. For work that may be used in regulation or litigation, those requirements harden further and the reporting format itself becomes specified. An accreditation held for a neighbouring method does not satisfy a requirement written for this one.

Data and publication terms are as commercially significant as the price. Public and donor funders increasingly require research data to be deposited under open conditions with defined metadata, and require resulting publications to be openly accessible, which has cost and timing implications a bid should carry. Ethical approval, biosafety and containment levels, animal research licensing, export and transfer controls on materials, and access and benefit-sharing obligations for genetic resources are conditions precedent with their own lead times, and they are the usual reason an award does not translate into a start.

This section describes how this category is bought generally, across the public buyers that publish it. The figures elsewhere on this page are measured for this market alone.

Who buys scientific research in Germany?

GlobalGov holds 1,240 scientific research records from 245 distinct buying organisations in Germany. The most frequent publishers are Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen, Referat Z2 (130 records); Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen (59 records); Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (56 records); Eisenbahn-Bundesamt (46 records); Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK) (45 records); Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (44 records). Between them the 6 largest account for 31% of everything published, so buying here is spread across many separate authorities.

What are scientific research contracts worth in Germany?

447 of the 1,240 records publish a contract value. The median is $270,000 and the largest single published value is $114.5M. By size, 22 under $100k, 361 between $100k and $1M, 57 between $1M and $10M, 7 above $10M. The remaining 793 publish no value at all, so every figure here describes the priced subset only, and values are as stated by the buyer rather than as finally awarded.

How long do bidders get to respond to scientific research tenders in Germany?

Across the 281 Germany scientific research notices that publish both a publication date and a closing date, the median response window is 35 days. A quarter of them allowed 32 days or fewer and a quarter stayed open for more than 47. Not one of them closed within a fortnight of being published, so the window on this market is consistently workable.

How often are scientific research tenders published in Germany?

Germany publishes about 15 notices a month in this category, 183 in the last twelve months. That is 10% more than the 166 published in the twelve months before that. Over the last three years there were 606, spread across 60 separate months of activity since 4 May 2021. May is historically the busiest month. No new notice has been published in this category since 26 May 2026, 128 days ago, so treat the figures above as a record of the market rather than as this week's pipeline.

How does Germany compare with other scientific research markets?

Among the 21 countries where GlobalGov holds a comparable scientific research market, Germany ranks 1st by number of records. No other country in the corpus publishes more of it. Within Germany itself, scientific research is the 27th largest of the 76 procurement categories tracked here.

Where do the Germany scientific research records on this page come from?

These 1,240 records are collected from 1 official source: TED (1,240). GlobalGov is an independent aggregator and is not affiliated with any of them; each record links back to the notice on its issuing portal. The set is rebuilt nightly, and the counts on this page were taken on 2026-10-01.

Most recent Scientific Research tenders in Germany

None of these are open for bids now — they are the most recent records GlobalGov holds for this market, kept here so the shape of a typical scientific research notice in Germany is visible. Set an alert to be told when the next one opens.

Other procurement categories in Germany

Scientific Research procurement in other markets