South Africa tender market report, October 2026
Month to date, updated 22 Oct 2026 · computed by FreeTender from 2,276 notices
- Notices published
- 2,276
- -9% vs September 2026 (month to date)
- Still open
- 1,681
- at the time of this report
- Median bid window
- 21 days
- middle half: 9–29 days
- With a stated value
- 0
- 0% of notices
Summary
So far in October 2026, FreeTender recorded 2,276 new procurement notices from buyers in South Africa (-9% on September 2026, comparing a part month with a full one). The largest sector was Construction & Infrastructure with 562 notices (25% of the total). Half of all notices gave bidders 21 days or less to respond. Friday was the busiest publishing day (27% of notices).
Notices by sector
- Construction & Infrastructure562 notices-13%
- Education & Training177 notices+4%
- Transport & Logistics154 notices-10%
- Water & Environment144 notices-6%
- IT & Telecom140 notices-21%
- Financial & Professional Services133 notices-17%
- Manufacturing & Supply130 notices+2%
- Facility Management & Cleaning95 notices-10%
- Real Estate & Facilities91 notices+52%
- Energy & Power87 notices+7%
- Healthcare & Pharma69 notices-22%
- Sports, Recreation & Events64 notices-2%
- Agriculture & Food61 notices+9%
- Media, Printing & Advertising61 notices-14%
- Forestry & Wildlife43 notices+65%
Change is against September 2026.
How buyers tendered
- Open tender2,213 notices
- Request for proposal20 notices
- Request for quotation18 notices
- Grant / funding call12 notices
- Contract award7 notices
- Corrigendum2 notices
- Consultancy2 notices
- Expression of interest2 notices
Publishing day
- Monday367 notices
- Tuesday360 notices
- Wednesday357 notices
- Thursday533 notices
- Friday622 notices
- Saturday21 notices
- Sunday16 notices
Most active buyers in South Africa
- ESKOM108 notices
- Transnet SOC Ltd64 notices
- Transnet National Ports Authority50 notices
- Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa48 notices
- Water and Sanitation39 notices
- Airports Company of South Africa38 notices
- Public Works35 notices
- Johannesburg Water32 notices
- City of Tshwane32 notices
Other months
Method: counts are notices first published in the month, by the buyer's country, across all sources FreeTender reads. Bid window means days from publication to the deadline. Coverage grows as we add sources, so part of any rise can be new coverage rather than new demand. You may quote these figures with a link to this page. The underlying rows are in our open dataset.