Who Wins Switzerland's Public Contracts
19,710 awards, CHF 47 billion. Swiss tenders draw far more competition than Europe's, half of the money stays in the home canton, and CHF 4.5 billion goes to incumbents without a tender.
19,710 awards worth CHF 47.3 billion · every award published on simap.ch, 1 January 2025 – 25 September 2026 · federal, cantonal, communal and public-company buyers · 89% of Swiss winners matched to the commercial register
A public tender in Switzerland draws a median of four bids. One in ten attracts a single bidder. In the European Union the share was four in ten in 2021, according to the European Court of Auditors. By the European Commission's own yardstick, Swiss procurement sits on the line between the best and the middle category.
The federal government published its procurement report on 18 September. It covers the federal administration, about CHF 6.7 billion a year. The larger part of public purchasing, by cantons, communes, hospitals, utilities and transport companies, has no comparable report. We read all 19,710 awards published on simap.ch since January 2025 to see who bids, who wins, where the money goes, and what happens when no tender is held.
All figures are computed from award notices published on simap.ch, not from surveys.
Three procedures, one threshold, and what gets published
Below a threshold, a public buyer may award a contract directly or invite a few firms of its choice. Above it, the contract must be tendered openly. For cantons and communes the intercantonal agreement (IVöB) sets the line at CHF 250,000 for goods and services and CHF 500,000 for main construction works; direct awards are allowed below CHF 150,000 (CHF 300,000 in main construction). The federal act (BöB) uses its own, similar thresholds.
A direct award above those limits is only allowed on the grounds listed in Art. 21 para. 2 of both laws, among them: no valid offer came in (a), only one supplier can deliver for technical, artistic or intellectual-property reasons (c), unforeseeable urgency (d), or switching supplier for a replacement or extension would be impossible or far more expensive (e).
What simap.ch shows is set by Art. 48: every award from an open or selective procedure, and direct awards only above the international (WTO) thresholds. Invitation procedures and small direct awards are mostly invisible. This study measures the published part, which is where the large contracts are.
01One tender in ten draws a single bid
Of 15,117 open and selective procedures that published their number of offers, 1,502 received exactly one (9.9%) and 26.7% received two or fewer. The median is four bids. The rate has held between 9% and 11% in every quarter since January 2025. The European Court of Auditors measured 41.8% single-bid tenders across the EU in 2021, up from 23.5% in 2011; the European Commission's scoreboard rates 10% or less as good and more than 20% as poor. On the comparable Swiss population, contracts above the international thresholds, the rate is 10.6%.
How many offers a tender draws
Open and selective procedures, by number of offers received (15 = 15 or more).
02Where competition is thin
The average hides wide gaps. Construction, which is 59% of the tenders, draws a single bid 7.1% of the time, and architecture and engineering 5.9%. Supplies draw one in five (19.2%). The thinnest markets are laboratory and precision instruments (34%), waste, cleaning and environmental services (23%), special vehicles (23%) and building-services machinery (21%). By buyer, communes have the most competition (7.6% single-bid), federal buyers the least (14.3%): armasuisse at 15.5%, the Federal Office for Buildings and Logistics at 15.0%, the roads office ASTRA at 13.5%. CHF 3.3 billion of contracts went to the only firm that bid.
Single-bid rate by sector
Share of open and selective tenders that received one offer, sectors with at least 100 tenders. Dashed lines: the EU scoreboard's 10% (good) and 20% (poor) marks.
03Neuchâtel sits on the EU's warning line
Among cantons, Neuchâtel stands apart: 19.8% of its tenders drew a single bid and 42% two or fewer, across construction (17%), services (16%) and supplies (32%). Ticino (12.8%) and Geneva (12.0%) follow. Thurgau (5.1%) and Lucerne (5.2%) have the most competition, with a median of five bids. The Competition Commission lists a small number of bidders among the conditions in which bid-rigging becomes possible; a low bid count is a reason to look, not evidence of anything.
The canton scorecard
Buyers located in each canton. Single-bid and ≤2 bids: open and selective tenders. Home share: cantonal, communal and institutional buyers only. Days: median from tender to award. — = fewer than 40 cases.
| Canton | Single bid | ≤2 bids | Home share | Days to award | Tenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NENeuchâtel | 19.8% | 42.0% | 36.3% | 145 | 207 |
| NWNidwalden | 16.7% | 45.2% | 24.2% | 102 | 42 |
| TITicino | 12.8% | 31.8% | 70.2% | 150 | 468 |
| GEGeneva | 12.0% | 30.7% | 55.9% | 108 | 1,059 |
| SOSolothurn | 11.7% | 27.0% | 34.2% | 112 | 196 |
| URUri | 11.4% | 34.1% | 35.6% | 96 | 44 |
| FRFribourg | 11.2% | 27.4% | 46.2% | 129 | 358 |
| VDVaud | 11.1% | 29.6% | 52.4% | 152 | 1,114 |
| BEBern | 10.8% | 29.0% | 53.8% | 104 | 1,353 |
| BSBasel-Stadt | 10.4% | 30.5% | 23.2% | 106 | 364 |
| AGAargau | 10.1% | 28.3% | 29.4% | 104 | 743 |
| ZHZurich | 9.6% | 24.4% | 57.8% | 110 | 3,010 |
| SZSchwyz | 9.4% | 25.2% | 28.6% | 112 | 127 |
| VSValais | 9.0% | 28.2% | 62.7% | 102 | 500 |
| GLGlarus | 8.8% | 38.2% | 48.6% | 96 | 68 |
| GRGraubünden | 8.6% | 28.8% | 64.7% | 70 | 569 |
| ZGZug | 8.2% | 22.4% | 22.5% | 119 | 98 |
| BLBasel-Landschaft | 8.2% | 24.6% | 29.2% | 106 | 281 |
| SHSchaffhausen | 7.2% | 23.2% | 39.7% | 78 | 69 |
| SGSt. Gallen | 6.8% | 20.0% | 45.4% | 100 | 424 |
| LULucerne | 5.2% | 18.7% | 46.0% | 102 | 498 |
| TGThurgau | 5.1% | 18.2% | 49.8% | 88 | 297 |
| JUJura | 2.4% | 21.4% | 54.5% | 133 | 42 |
| OWObwalden | — | — | — | — | — |
| ARAppenzell A.Rh. | — | — | — | — | — |
| AIAppenzell I.Rh. | — | — | — | — | — |
04Half of the money stays in the home canton
Of 14,583 awards by cantonal and communal buyers, 50.8% went to a firm registered in the same canton, 45.8% of the value. In construction the share is 61%, in supplies 24%. Ticino keeps 70% of its awards at home, although Ticino firms win only 2.8% of awards nationally; Graubünden keeps 65% and Valais 63%. Language and mountains explain much of it. At the other end, Zug, Basel-Stadt and Nidwalden give three awards in four to firms from other cantons. Aargau's government told its parliament in October 2025 that it aims to invite at least one firm from outside the canton to every invitation procedure, because that makes collusion much harder.
Share of awards won by a firm from the same canton
Cantonal, communal and institutional buyers, 1 January 2025 – 25 September 2026.
05Where the money lands
Summing what each canton's firms win from buyers in other cantons, minus what its own buyers pay to firms elsewhere, Zurich comes out CHF 1.45 billion ahead and Vaud CHF 1.68 billion behind. The Vaud figure is two purchases more than a pattern: Lausanne's transport company bought the m2 metro modernisation from Alstom (CHF 352 million) and new buses from Daimler, both registered in Zurich, and the canton's IT contracts went largely to Geneva-registered firms. The balance counts the winner's registered office, not where the work is done, so it overstates headquarters cantons.
Net public-contract balance by canton
CHF million won by each canton's firms from buyers in other cantons, minus CHF million its own buyers paid to firms elsewhere. Counts the winner's registered office, which favours headquarters cantons.
06The incumbent's bonus: CHF 4.5 billion without a tender
3,619 published awards were direct awards, 18% of the awards and CHF 7.1 billion. Because only direct awards above the international thresholds must be published, this is a floor. 1,031 were justified by lock-in, where switching supplier would be impossible or far more costly (CHF 2.2 billion), and 939 by a single possible supplier (CHF 2.3 billion). The largest: the Lausanne m2 metro control system to Alstom (CHF 352 million), SBB's extended rail-control partnership with Siemens Mobility (CHF 280 million), federal data storage to NetApp and Sonio (CHF 257 million), maintenance of the national siren system Polyalert to Eviden (CHF 103 million). SAP, Swisscom and Abraxas each received 25 or more direct awards. 16% of direct awards publish no reason at all.
Why no tender was held
Published direct awards by the ground given (Art. 21 para. 2), CHF million and number of awards.
07Seventy days in Graubünden, 152 in Vaud
From the publication of a tender to the publication of its award, the median is 111 days, and a quarter take more than 153. Graubünden is fastest (70 days), followed by Schaffhausen (78) and Thurgau (88). Vaud (152), Ticino (150) and Neuchâtel (145) are slowest; federal buyers take 124. Construction is decided fastest (107 days), supplies slowest (118). For a small firm, four to five months between offer and decision is working capital tied up and a team kept on hold.
Days from tender to award
Median days between the publication of a tender and of its award, open and selective procedures.
08The state buys from established firms
We matched 89% of Swiss winners to the commercial register. Firms founded in the last five years won 2.8% of the award value, although they make up 16% of the active companies in our database. Firms at least 50 years old won 26.6%, against 6.4% of the companies. Reference lists, turnover thresholds and certificates in tender documents favour a track record. The baseline over-represents established firms, so the gap for young companies is, if anything, understated.
Who wins, by the age of the firm
Share of award value won by Swiss firms of each age (matched to the register), next to the share of active companies of that age in the ValIndex database.
098,123 winners, and no captured buyers
The market is fragmented: 8,123 different firms won at least one award, 59% of them exactly one. The ten largest winners took 10.9% of the value, the hundred largest 39%. Implenia leads with CHF 1.05 billion from 115 awards and 74 different buyers. We looked for the pattern the Competition Commission names as a warning sign, one firm winning again and again from the same buyer: among the 263 buyers with at least ten competitive awards, the median buyer gave 10% of them to its most frequent winner, and none gave more than half.
The largest winners
By published award value, 1 January 2025 – 25 September 2026. Framework agreements count at their ceiling.
| Firm | CHF m | Awards | Buyers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Implenia Schweiz AGZH | 1,053 | 115 | 74 |
| Losinger Marazzi AGZH | 597 | 9 | 7 |
| Frutiger AGBE | 574 | 53 | 37 |
| Scheuchzer SAVD | 565 | 12 | 5 |
| Siemens Mobility AGZH | 524 | 37 | 20 |
| ALSTOM Schweiz AGZH | 515 | 10 | 7 |
| Daimler Buses Schweiz AGZH | 488 | 11 | 10 |
| adesso Schweiz AGZH | 483 | 28 | 22 |
| ti&m AG BernBE | 483 | 17 | 9 |
| ELCA Informatique SAVD | 449 | 36 | 33 |
| Adnovum AGZH | 443 | 18 | 12 |
| Freestar-Informatik AGZG | 433 | 3 | 3 |
10What it means for buyers of Swiss SMEs
824 independent companies with an estimated CHF 5–100 million in revenue won three or more competitive public contracts in 21 months, CHF 8.7 billion in total. For an acquirer, a book of public contracts is two things at once. It is visible, recurring demand won in open competition, typically against three rivals, which is as close as a private company gets to audited evidence of its competitiveness. And it is a dependency: contracts are re-tendered, and the home-canton advantage that helped win them does not transfer to a buyer from elsewhere.
Download the data
The canton scorecard, the sector table and the direct-award grounds, as CSV.
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Methodology
- Population
- Every award published on simap.ch between 1 January 2025 and 25 September 2026, retrieved through the platform's public API by publication type (award after tender, study contract, competition, direct award). 21,695 winner records in 19,710 award decisions (a decision is one contract or one lot). The platform's new API went live in mid-2024 and buyers migrated to it through December 2024, so July–December 2024 is excluded. Some cantons, Geneva and Vaud among them, also publish on their own portals; awards found only there are not included.
- Measures
- Competition: open and selective procedures that published their number of offers (15,117). Buyer level from the procurement office's email domain and name: federal (admin.ch, SBB, Post, ETH domain, armasuisse and others), cantonal administration (canton domains), communal (names and city domains), and public institutions and companies (hospitals, universities, utilities, transport companies). Home share: cantonal, communal and institutional buyers, winner's registered canton equal to the buyer's canton. Direct-award grounds: the letter of Art. 21 para. 2 when the justification cites it, otherwise keywords in German, French and Italian. Days to award: tender publication to award publication. Winners matched to the ValIndex register by normalised name and postcode. Values are the prices published with the award, including VAT as stated; awards above CHF 500 million are excluded from sums.
- Legal frame
- Intercantonal Agreement on Public Procurement (IVöB 2019), Art. 21 (direct award) and Art. 48 (publications), Annex 2 (thresholds); Federal Act on Public Procurement (BöB, SR 172.056.1), Art. 21 and Annex 4. The two laws use the same grounds for direct awards.
- Sources
- simap.ch public API (awards and tenders); Swiss commercial register via the ValIndex database; European Court of Auditors, Special Report 28/2023; European Commission, Single Market Scoreboard, public procurement indicators (reporting period 2024); Federal Procurement Conference, procurement report 2025 (18 September 2026); Canton of Aargau, report on measures against bid-rigging cartels (31 October 2025).
- Limits
- Only published awards are counted: invitation procedures and direct awards below the international thresholds are largely missing, so the share of direct awards is a lower bound. Published values of framework agreements are ceilings, not spending. The EU figures cover contracts above EU thresholds in 2021 and are not an exact like-for-like comparison. The winner's canton is its registered office, which overstates headquarters cantons. Direct-award grounds come from free text; 35% could not be classified. A low number of bids is not evidence of collusion.
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ValIndex, "Who Wins Switzerland's Public Contracts", September 2026. Based on all 19,710 awards published on simap.ch from 1 January 2025 to 25 September 2026. https://valindex.ch/en/research/swiss-public-contracts-2026/