Procurement description
The Crown Estate, as managers of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, periodically holds competitive tenders to award seabed rights for the development, construction and operation of offshore wind farms.
In September 2024, The Crown Estate set out its approach to bringing such future tenders to market in its Future of Offshore Wind publication (https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/future-offshore-wind). This was alongside a report setting out our ambition to develop a Marine Delivery Routemap, to help enable a more holistic approach to seabed development in the future.
As with previous leasing rounds (e.g. Offshore Wind Leasing Rounds 4 and 5) The Crown Estate will engage with a variety of stakeholders to shape the design of its future leasing. As part of this, The Crown Estate is undertaking market engagement through a questionnaire to gather input on the design of future leasing rounds, with a focus on the next leasing round. This questionnaire is targeted at offshore wind developers and investors only and will be open to responses from 21 November 2025 to 19 December 2025. If offshore wind project development and investment companies wish to participate in this engagement, then they should apply by sending an email to offshorewind@thecrownestate.co.uk.
We reserve the right to engage with offshore wind developers and investors only i.e. those who may be interested in bidding in a leasing round, either as a sole bidder or as part of a consortium. The Crown Estate will engage with other categories of stakeholder at appropriate times and in an appropriate way.
The Crown Estate is in the process of designing future offshore wind leasing rounds, which this questionnaire will inform. There is currently no formal date for the launch of the next offshore wind leasing round. The date set out below (the "Engagement deadline") refers to the engagement activity, which is the subject of this PME Notice, rather than any contract notice for a leasing process.
For further information on The Crown Estate's involvement in offshore wind, please visit https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/offshore-wind.