The essentials in 30 seconds
- Based on the SEAO open data, a clear majority of Québec public contracts, nearly 2 in 3, are awarded every month without a call for tenders, most often by mutual agreement.
- The median contract runs around $64,000: everyday public procurement is made of modest-sized contracts, not mega-projects.
- For an SME, a large share of contracts never goes through public notices, which is why it matters to already be findable by the buyer.
Every month, we read the SEAO open data (the public registry of Québec government contracts) to pull out what really matters for an SME. Not the headlines about mega-projects, but the reality of the market as a small business can actually go after it. May 2026 edition.
Edition updated on July 22, 2026. A methodology revision reclassified mandated purchases (groupings of bodies led by UMQ, FQM or the Société québécoise des infrastructures) as tenders rather than sole-source contracts. The recomputed shares move little for this edition; the overall finding, a clear majority of contracts awarded without a call for tenders by count, is unchanged. Details in our methodology note.
The stable finding: nearly 2 contracts in 3 without a call for tenders
Looking at the months with consolidated SEAO data (June 2025 to February 2026), one fact comes up every month: the majority of published contracts are awarded without a public call for tenders. Out of roughly 39,700 contracts awarded over that period (counted by award process, one contract = one OCID), nearly two thirds went by mutual agreement (on the order of 65%), and nearly 2 in 3 with no open competition at all. The figure varies from month to month, but it stays consistently a large majority.
Source: Adjudica analysis of the SEAO open data. Shares consolidated over the months with stabilized data (June 2025 to February 2026); the current month is flagged as provisional.
What this means for you. The textbook picture of public procurement (a notice is published, everyone bids, then the body applies an award rule) describes only a minority of contracts, by number. The bulk plays out elsewhere: in direct awards to suppliers the body already knows. An SME's way in isn't only the bid; it's being findable before the need even exists.
Number and amount: two realities not to confuse
Watch out for the interpretation trap. If a majority of contracts go by mutual agreement by number, that isn't true by amount. The largest contracts (construction, infrastructure, major services) most often go through a public call for tenders (except where the law provides otherwise): few in number, but heavy in dollars. These are two different markets:
- The volume market: thousands of small and mid-sized contracts, mostly by mutual agreement, accessible to an SME.
- The value market: a few large competitive contracts that capture most of the dollars.
An SME with 5 to 50 employees plays mainly in the first, and can win there, except when a public call for tenders is aimed precisely at its expertise.
Contracts of a manageable size
Month after month, the median of the amounts awarded runs around $64,000: half of public contracts come in below that. It's a freeing data point for a small business. Everyday public procurement isn't made of multi-million-dollar contracts, but of reasonably sized mandates, within reach of a modest, well-organized outfit, typically in the $25,000–$100,000 range, which holds the bulk of the accessible volume. It's exactly the ground we describe in the article on contracts by mutual agreement.
The most recent month: May 2026 (provisional figures)
For May 2026, the data available at publication counts roughly 3,750 contracts awarded, for nearly $640M. The mutual-agreement share there looks higher than average.
Why "provisional". Contracts are published on SEAO with a lag after they're concluded. In our most recent extractions, that lag temporarily overrepresents certain methods, including mutual agreement: the current month fills in over the following weeks. That's why we anchor this barometer on the trend from the consolidated months (nearly 2 in 3), and not on the latest month alone.
The most active sectors
By number of contracts, the fields most present on SEAO in recent weeks: maintenance and repair of buildings and equipment, architecture and engineering services, professional and administrative support services, buildings, computer hardware and software, medical supplies and equipment. A wide range, where services dominate, a sign you don't need to be a construction firm to sell to the government.
What to take away
Québec public procurement, seen through its data, isn't what you might imagine. By number of contracts, it's dominated by mutual agreement (a clear majority, every month) and by contracts of a manageable size (median around $64,000), with a sweet spot in the $25,000–$100,000 range. For an SME, the message is constant: a large share of awarded contracts doesn't go through an open public notice; monitoring notices must therefore be paired with a strategy of upstream visibility with buying bodies. It's a strategy of presence as much as of bidding.
Your move this month. Check that your listing in SEAO's Supplier Directory is up to date and that your product and service codes properly cover what you do. That's what decides whether a buyer finds you on the day they're looking for a mutual-agreement supplier. We explain how in the guide how to register on SEAO.
Methodology
The figures in this barometer come from the SEAO open data (Système électronique d'appel d'offres). We keep awarded contracts (with a supplier and an amount greater than zero), dated within the analyzed period (a SEAO extract republishes old records; so we filter on the award date), counting by award process (one contract = one OCID), as in our in-depth investigation. The "consolidated" shares cover the months with stabilized data; the current month is flagged as provisional. The amounts are orders of magnitude; no company is named.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
Data source
Dataset: “Système électronique d’appel d’offres (SEAO)”, published by the Secrétariat du Conseil du trésor (Québec Treasury Board Secretariat), released on Données Québec under the CC BY 4.0 licence.
Processing: data extracted, cleaned and analysed by Adjudica; the figures shown result from this processing and are not an official SEAO publication. See our data.
- SEAO corpus in OCDS format, extraction by Adjudica from June 2025 to May 2026.
- Categorization by nature of good or service according to the Québec public-procurement nomenclature.
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