Museum Tenders and Contracts

Museum tenders cover exhibition design and fit-out, conservation and collections care, audio-visual and digital installation work, and refurbishment or construction of museum buildings. Contracts are published by national museums, local councils and independent museum trusts.

Stotles brings together museum tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. Large exhibition programmes are split into packages by trade, and interpretation and design services are let as frameworks by national museums.

Exhibition fit-out brings duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, and loans and displays may need to meet government indemnity scheme security standards. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar contracts at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Large exhibition programmes are split into separate packages by trade, and interpretation services are let through multi-lot frameworks. National museums, local councils and independent museum trusts commission museum work.

National museums, local authorities running municipal museums and galleries, and independent museum trusts all publish museum-related tenders. Awards go to specialist exhibition designers, conservation contractors, AV integrators and construction firms.

Read museum capital programmes, exhibition schedules, lottery and arts funding awards and early market engagement notices, which show museum work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

Museum notices carry 92521100 (Museum-exhibition services), and gallery building work carries 45212300 (Construction work for art and cultural buildings).