Live tender data · Date-stamped
Quebec government tenders, without the guesswork
A live feed of open federal tenders you could deliver in Quebec, plus the one thing most guides skip: Quebec's provincial and municipal contracts live on SEAO, not CanadaBuys. Here is exactly what sits where, what the French-language reality means for your bid, and which federal buyers actually spend on Quebec work.
SEAO and Autorité des marchés publics facts verified against official Quebec sources, July 2026. Live tender data below is licensed under the Open Government Licence, Canada. Jump to the SEAO and CanadaBuys split.
Open federal tenders you could bid on from Quebec
These are open federal opportunities whose region of delivery includes Quebec, pulled live from CanadaBuys and refreshed every day at the source. This is the federal side of the story only. Quebec's own provincial and municipal contracts are posted on SEAO, which we walk through just below. Use the browser to see and filter every open federal one.
Open federal tenders deliverable in Quebec
As of Jul 20, 2026 · CanadaBuys open data- 22JulDetails →
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"Deliverable in Quebec" means the buyer named Quebec as a region where the work can be performed. That includes opportunities marked for delivery anywhere in Canada, which a Quebec business can bid on just as easily. It is not a filter on which department is buying, and it is not the same as the provincial and municipal procurement that runs on SEAO. For the wider picture, read how to find government contracts across Canada, or the plain-English guide to selling to government.
SEAO or CanadaBuys? The Quebec tender split, explained
Quebec is the one province where the "where do I look" question has a clean answer, and a lot of national guides get it wrong. There are two systems, and which one you use depends entirely on whether the buyer is federal or Quebec.
Quebec provincial, municipal and broader public sector, use SEAO. The Système électronique d'appel d'offres, or SEAO, is the Government of Quebec's official electronic tendering system. It carries tenders from Quebec ministries and agencies, from municipalities and cities, and from the broader public sector such as hospitals, health authorities, colleges and school boards. Quebec municipal bodies are legally required to publish their tenders through SEAO, so unlike other provinces there is no scatter of separate city portals to track. If a Quebec public body is buying, the notice is on SEAO.
Federal departments, use CanadaBuys. When a federal department or agency buys work that will be delivered in Quebec, that opportunity is on CanadaBuys, not SEAO. Those are the opportunities in the live feed at the top of this page. A federal contract will not appear on SEAO, and a Quebec provincial or city contract will almost never appear on CanadaBuys. For the full national portal map, see our directory of every Canadian tender portal.
One practical wrinkle worth knowing: the old seao.ca address has moved to read-only, and the live current system is at seao.gouv.qc.ca. Plenty of older blog posts and directory links still point at the retired address.
| You want to sell to | Where it is posted | Cost to browse | Language of the notices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quebec ministries and provincial agencies | SEAO (seao.gouv.qc.ca) | Free to view daily notices | French first |
| Quebec municipalities and cities | SEAO, publication is legally required | Free to view daily notices | French first |
| Hospitals, health authorities, colleges, school boards | SEAO | Free to view daily notices | French first |
| Federal departments, work delivered in Quebec | CanadaBuys, or the live feed at the top of this page | Free to browse and bid | English and French |
What to know before you bid on SEAO
SEAO is genuinely open and mostly free, but there are a few Quebec-specific realities that catch out-of-province bidders. None of them is a wall, and knowing them up front saves a wasted afternoon.
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Browsing is free, no account needed
You can read the daily notices, the Avis du jour, on SEAO without logging in. To submit a bid you register a free professional account through Quebec's government authentication service, using a company email address rather than a personal one.
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Out-of-province businesses are welcome
Quebec public tenders are open to businesses from the rest of Canada and abroad under the trade agreements Quebec is party to. When you register, a company not incorporated or registered in Quebec selects an option that skips the Quebec-specific registration fields, so you are not blocked by your home province.
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The documents are in French
SEAO has an English toggle that translates the menus, categories and search filters, but the tender notices and almost all tender documents stay in French. The single biggest practical barrier for an English-only business is reading and responding in French, so plan to search with French keywords and to budget for translation on anything you pursue.
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Small per-submission fees apply
Submitting an electronic bid carries a modest fee, on the order of $20 to $30 per submission as of July 2026, and there are small à la carte charges to order certain documents. Optional low-cost monthly subscriptions exist mainly to bring those per-transaction costs down at volume. Always confirm the current fee schedule on SEAO before you rely on a number.
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Larger contracts need AMP authorization
The Autorité des marchés publics, or AMP, is Quebec's independent procurement watchdog. A business must hold an AMP contracting authorization to enter into a public contract or subcontract at or above the value thresholds the government sets. You do not need it to browse or to bid on smaller work, but for a larger contract it is a gate you clear in advance, so check the current threshold on the AMP site early.
Thresholds and the authorization process change over time, so treat the AMP requirement as something to confirm at the source, not a fixed number.
The French words you will meet on a Quebec tender
You do not need fluent French to work out whether a SEAO notice is worth pursuing, but you do need the vocabulary of procurement. Here are the terms that appear on almost every Quebec tender, with what each one means in plain English.
| French term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Appel d'offres | A call for tenders, the Quebec equivalent of an RFP or a public tender |
| Appel d'offres public | An open tender that any qualifying business is free to bid on |
| Soumission | Your bid, the proposal you submit in response to the notice |
| Soumissionnaire | A bidder, a business that submits a soumission |
| Adjudicataire | The winning bidder, the business the contract is awarded to |
| Donneur d'ouvrage | The buyer, the public body that issues the contract |
| Organisme public | A public body or government organization |
| Avis d'appel d'offres | The tender notice that announces an opportunity |
| Avis d'attribution | The award notice, naming who won and for how much |
| Cahier des charges | The tender documents and the requirements you must meet |
| Devis | The specifications, the detailed scope of the work |
| Ouverture des soumissions | The bid opening, when submitted bids are unsealed |
| Date limite, or date de clôture | The closing date, your deadline to submit |
| Gré à gré | A direct award by mutual agreement, without a public tender |
| Autorisation de contracter | The AMP contracting authorization, required above set thresholds |
Two of these are worth extra attention. An avis d'attribution, the award notice, tells you who won past contracts and for how much, which is the single most useful public signal for pricing your own bid. And gré à gré, a direct award, means the contract was given without an open competition, so if you see a lot of them from a buyer you care about, that tells you relationships matter more than the portal there.
Which federal buyers spend on Quebec-delivered work
One useful way to plan the federal side is to see which departments award the most contracts for work delivered in Quebec. A short list tends to account for most of the activity, which tells you where the effort of registering and building relationships pays off. This is the CanadaBuys federal slice only. SEAO does not publish its award data into this dataset, so provincial and municipal winners are not counted here.
Top federal buyers for Quebec-delivered work
Ranked by number of contract awards on record with a Quebec delivery region. Award data is published unaudited and lags the calendar by months, so read it as a guide to who buys, not a live scoreboard.
Award data window: Feb 15, 1996 → Jul 18, 2026 · CanadaBuys award notices (published unaudited, lags months)
Concentration is the story here, just as it is federally. When a handful of buyers account for the bulk of the awards, the practical move is to learn those buyers deeply, get onto their bidders lists and standing arrangements, and mirror the language of their solicitations, rather than spreading yourself thin across every department. When you are ready to respond, our guide to writing a winning government bid walks through how evaluators actually score. Indigenous-owned businesses have extra routes worth knowing about in our guide to Indigenous set-asides and the PSIB.
Quebec tenders, answered
Where do I find Quebec government tenders?
What is the difference between SEAO and CanadaBuys?
Do I need to speak French to bid on a Quebec government contract?
Can a business from outside Quebec bid on Quebec government contracts?
Is SEAO free to use?
Do I need authorization from the Autorité des marchés publics to bid?
Where do Quebec municipalities post their tenders?
See every open federal tender you could bid on in Quebec
The live browser matches open federal tenders to your province and industry, and tells you why each one made the cut. Free, and no account needed. For the provincial and municipal side, head straight to SEAO.
Bidding takes capacity. Quebec grants can fund it.
Winning government work often means hiring, buying equipment, or building the systems a bigger contract demands. Quebec has some of the most generous business funding in the country for exactly that, and many programs stack. It is worth knowing which ones you qualify for before you scale up to chase tenders.
Start with our overviews of Quebec business grants, hiring and training grants, manufacturing and equipment grants, and R and D and innovation grants. Or take the two-minute quiz below and we will match you to the funding you actually qualify for.
Sources
Quebec-specific facts on this page, covering SEAO and the Autorité des marchés publics, were verified against official sources in July 2026. Live tender data comes from CanadaBuys open data (refreshed daily at the source); each data block on this page carries its own as-of stamp. Award figures come from CanadaBuys award notices, which are published unaudited and lag by months. Licensed under the Open Government Licence, Canada.
SEAO, Système électronique d'appel d'offres (seao.gouv.qc.ca) · Autorité des marchés publics (amp.quebec) · AMP, when a contracting authorization is required · CanadaBuys (canadabuys.canada.ca)