The Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has opened a public consultation on a draft ministerial order that will set the regulatory bases for the country’s first (floating) offshore wind tender.
The consultation runs from 4 February to 24 February 2026 and invites feedback on key design elements of the upcoming competitive process, including areas to be auctioned, project size, economic regime, evaluation criteria and technical requirements.
Spain established a legal framework for offshore renewable energy projects through the Royal Decree 962/2024 issued in September 2024 , replacing older procedures and creating a single competitive bidding process that will simultaneously allocate economic support, grid access capacity and priority for maritime public domain concessions.
Before launching the competitive bidding process, the procedural rules must be approved through a ministerial order. Under the Royal Decree, the ministerial order will specify key aspects for the development of the offshore wind projects, including the target areas, capacity to be tendered, timing and criteria such as price, environmental impact and industrial benefits.
MITECO says that the aim now is to approve the rules for the first tender, and that further ministerial orders may be issued later under the same Royal Decree to pursue new objectives.
Spain has a national target of between 1 GW and 3 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 under its Offshore Wind Roadmap from 2021.
Currently, the country has 7 MW of operating offshore wind capacity across two demonstration projects. In 2019, the 5 MW Elisa prototype , Spain’s first offshore wind turbine, was put into operation at the site offshore Gran Canaria, and in 2023, the 2 MW DemoSATH floating wind project started generating electricity at the BiMEP testing area offshore the Basque Country.
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