FreeTender
Market analysis6 min read · Updated 14 November 2026

The hot topics in public procurement: schools, water, cloud and EV charging

We tracked 19 topics across 443,000 tenders. Schools, water treatment, cloud and EV charging grew fastest in October; solar stayed flat; India leads in roads, bridges, solar and street lighting.

Sector labels are broad. To see what governments are actually asking for, we searched every notice title (and its English translation, where the original is in another language) for 19 specific topics, from solar power to drones.

14,756
notices about roads and highways, the largest topic
+77%
schools and classrooms, October vs September
+56%
water and wastewater treatment
2,355
solar power tenders, most of them in India

The biggest topics

Number of notices mentioning each topicAugust to mid-November 2026
Show as table
Value
Roads & highways14,756
Schools & classrooms11,125
Solar power2,355
Railways & metro2,073
Bridges2,050
Water treatment1,640
LED street lighting1,257
Medical imaging898
Cloud & data centres893
Cybersecurity843
CCTV & surveillance771
EV & charging411
Drones366
Source: FreeTender analysis · freetender.net

What grew in October

Change in notices, October vs SeptemberSame steadily publishing portals in both months
Show as table
TopicSeptemberOctoberChange
Schools & classrooms1,9563,457+77%
Water treatment325506+56%
EV & charging101155+53%
Cloud & data centres176255+45%
CCTV & surveillance125165+32%
Bridges489616+26%
Cybersecurity175213+22%
Roads & highways3,9094,164+7%
Solar power616649+5%
Source: FreeTender analysis · freetender.net

Who is buying what

  • Schools: Germany (1,750 notices), Singapore (1,684), India (1,480), Kenya (1,009) and Brazil (971).
  • Water treatment: India (415), Germany (284) and France (134).
  • Solar power: India dominates (509), followed by Poland (373), Germany (204), Kenya (116) and Brazil (111).
  • EV and charging: still a small market, led by Germany (77) and Poland (69).
  • Cloud and data centres: Brazil leads (185), ahead of Germany (79) and China (74).
  • Cybersecurity: South Africa is the surprise leader (144 notices), ahead of India (81).
  • LED street lighting: overwhelmingly Indian (891 of 1,257 notices). India also leads CCTV and surveillance (283).
  • Drones: 366 notices, a third of them Indian (110).

Two caveats. Wind power barely appears (35 notices) because large wind farms are awarded through energy auctions, not ordinary tenders. And we left out artificial intelligence entirely: the abbreviation “AI” is also a common word in Italian titles, which makes a clean count impossible from titles alone.

Track any of these topics with a free keyword alert, or see the energy transition analysis.

How we counted. 443,107 notices that FreeTender collected from official procurement portals, development banks and UN agencies between August and mid-November 2026. Notices that an aggregator had re-published from somewhere else are left out, so nothing is counted twice. The figures describe what FreeTender collects, which is a large share of public tendering but not every notice published in the world. Topics are matched on the notice title and, where available, its English machine translation. A notice can match more than one topic. Monthly changes use only portals that published steadily in both months.

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