The 2025 Procura+ Awards have selected eleven submissions that are still in contention to be selected as the winners and runners up. Four are in the category Sustainable Procurement of the Year, another four in the category Global Initiative of the Year, and three in the category Innovation Procurement of the Year. The finalists will be announced in September and . the winners will be revealed on 8 October, during the Procura+ Seminar in Middelburg.

In the Sustainable Procurement of the Year Category, the shortlisted candidates are the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) (Germany), the Municipality of Oeiras (Portugal), Bretagne Porte de Loire Communauté (France) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the Netherlands). BVG implemented a groundbreaking sustainable procurement focused on installing up to 101 electric bus charging points at 36 locations across Berlin, valued at €40–50 million. The Oeiras City Council developed a forward-thinking public procurement model for the maintenance of its green spaces, combining strict environmental standards with advanced technology. Bretagne Porte de Loire Communauté decided to furnish its new ‘Maison de services Jeunesse & Numérique’ entirely with second-life furniture. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, launched PROGRESS 3.0, a €20 million joint research initiative in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense, aiming to strengthen the Dutch knowledge base in foreign policy and international security through strategic, policy-supportive research, with a focus on social sustainability, diversity and inclusion (D&I).

The City of Oslo, shortlisted in the Innovation Procurement of the Year Category, launched the ‘Oslo Furniture Reuse Platform - Loopfront’, a pioneering digital solution that integrates circular economy practices into public procurement. It is joined in this category by Orleans Metropole (France) and ANCI Toscana (Italy). The French city pioneering sustainable energy project that captures heat from urban wastewater to supply clean energy to residential and university buildings, while ANCI Toscana, CLIMABOROUGH Innovation Partnership (with a budget of 2,4 million euro) supports climate resilience in eight European cities through socio-technical solutions tailored to each locality in the fields of energy, mobility and waste.

For the first time in the history of the Procura+ Awards, public authorities from outside of Europe were invited to submit applications, in the category Global Initiative of the Year. The shortlisted candidates here come from New Zealand, UNDP Uzbekistan, Brazil and South Africa. The Brazilian Ministry of Management & Innovation in Public Services launched Procure+Brasil, a digital public marketplace aiming to make public procurement more inclusive and sustainable by simplifying access for micro-entrepreneurs, especially those from vulnerable backgrounds. Auckland Council’s Ngā Puna Pūkenga (NPP) – Skills for Industry programme is a collaborative initiative that began in 2019 in cooperation with New Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development to address both labour shortages in infrastructure and social inequities in employment. The Western Cape Government’s Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, in South Africa, developed the “SmartProcurement” programme to embed sustainable public procurement (SPP) across the provincial government. Finally, UNDP Uzbekistan’s initiative, “The Path to Water Through Life, No One Left Behind,” aimed to provide sustainable access to clean water in remote communities of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, a region severely impacted by environmental degradation.

More information about each of these applicants can be found on the Procura+ Website.