Germany Imports Its MedicineGermany Imports Its Medicine

Germany buys nearly all of its medical cannabis from other countries. In 2025 it imported 201,094 kilograms. That figure comes from BfArM, Germany’s federal drug regulator, which first published it early in 2026 and has since revised the year slightly higher, to a little over 205 tonnes.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗} It was close to three times the 72,706 kg imported in 2024.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗}

The country grows very little of its own. Three licensed farms make up Germany’s entire domestic supply, and even the harvest they plan for 2026, about 13.7 tonnes, is under a tenth of what Germany imports in a year.^{[2, 3][2, 3]2BfArMFAQ Medizinisches CannabisOpen source ↗3krautinvestUnternehmen wollen in Deutschland 2026 13,7 Tonnen Cannabis anbauenOpen source ↗} That gap is the shape of the whole market: Germany imports a crop and turns it into medicine after it lands. Reaching a German pharmacy means passing through six licensed steps, and the middle one does the work the rest depend on.

One note on the numbers. BfArM restates its import figures as later quarters come in, and the 2025 total has already been marked up once. This article uses the figures as first published and says so wherever a number could move.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗}

Germany’s tiny domestic supply began as a matter of law. Until 2024, exactly three companies were allowed to grow medical cannabis in Germany, capped at a combined 2.6 tonnes a year, all of it sold to the state at a fixed price. A 2024 law, the Medical Cannabis Act, scrapped that system and let companies apply for ordinary cultivation licences instead.^{[3][3]3krautinvestUnternehmen wollen in Deutschland 2026 13,7 Tonnen Cannabis anbauenOpen source ↗}

The cap is gone, and the same three farms (Aurora, Demecan, and Tilray’s Aphria site) now plan to grow far more, with four further applications pending at BfArM as of late 2025.^{[3, 4][3, 4]3krautinvestUnternehmen wollen in Deutschland 2026 13,7 Tonnen Cannabis anbauenOpen source ↗4krautinvestMedizinisches Cannabis: Vier weitere Anbaulizenzen in Deutschland beantragtOpen source ↗} Even so, the 13.7 tonnes planned for 2026 is a small fraction of demand. Domestic growing is expanding fast and still barely registers against the imports. The imports, meanwhile, lean on a few suppliers: Canada alone shipped about 93,006 kg in 2025, close to half the year’s total, and Portugal shipped another 55,164 kg.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗} The rest arrived in smaller lots from more than twenty other countries. A market this dependent on one supplier has nowhere obvious to turn if that supply is interrupted.

Six steps stand between the field and the patient: growing the crop, drying and packing it, processing it into a pharmaceutical product, importing it into Germany, distributing it to pharmacies, and dispensing it. Each step needs its own permit under German law, and the chart below names the statute behind each one.^{[5, 6, 7, 8][5, 6, 7, 8]5Gesetze im InternetArzneimittelgesetz § 13 - HerstellungserlaubnisOpen source ↗6Gesetze im InternetArzneimittelgesetz § 72 - EinfuhrerlaubnisOpen source ↗7Gesetze im InternetArzneimittelgesetz § 52a - Erlaubnis fuer den GrosshandelOpen source ↗8European CommissionEudraLex Volume 4 - Annex 16 Certification by a Qualified Person and Batch ReleaseOpen source ↗}

One requirement runs through the whole chain: at every hand-off, someone has to prove where the crop came from. To import it, the paperwork must name the product, the country it was grown in, the grower, and the supplier, and show that the crop was grown under government control for medical use.^{[9, 10][9, 10]9Gesetze im InternetMedizinal-Cannabisgesetz (MedCanG)Open source ↗10BfArMHinweise fuer Haendler nach § 4 MedCanG (Stand 09/25)Open source ↗} A quality certificate does not satisfy that last requirement; the regulator says so directly.^{[10][10]10BfArMHinweise fuer Haendler nach § 4 MedCanG (Stand 09/25)Open source ↗} The route is built to keep asking one question, batch after batch: where did this come from, and can you prove it?

Five of the six steps move the product along. One changes what it legally is: the processing step. The crop arrives at a licensed manufacturer as an agricultural product with growing records. It leaves as a manufactured medicine, certified for release by the named expert who must sign off every batch before it can be sold.^{[5, 8][5, 8]5Gesetze im InternetArzneimittelgesetz § 13 - HerstellungserlaubnisOpen source ↗8European CommissionEudraLex Volume 4 - Annex 16 Certification by a Qualified Person and Batch ReleaseOpen source ↗} Before this step there is a harvest. After it there is a medicine a German pharmacy can dispense.

The industry has a name for renting that step: toll processing. A farm sends its crop to a licensed manufacturer that already runs a certified plant, and pays that manufacturer to make the medicine from it. The reason the arrangement exists is timing. A farm can be ready to grow years before it could run a licensed medicine factory of its own; the processor already runs one. So the farm supplies the crop, the processor makes and certifies the medicine, and the German importer receives a product it can legally stand behind.^{[10][10]10BfArMHinweise fuer Haendler nach § 4 MedCanG (Stand 09/25)Open source ↗} The processing step is where the market’s basic fact, a foreign crop meeting German demand, is settled.

Under a United Nations drug-control treaty, each country files a yearly estimate of how much cannabis it will import and is expected to stay inside it.^{[11][11]11Business of CannabisGermany expands its medical cannabis import cap as Australia moves to cut backOpen source ↗} Germany’s 2025 estimate started near 122 tonnes. Demand ran through it by September. BfArM paused new import approvals, and on 20 October 2025 the International Narcotics Control Board, the treaty’s supervisor, raised Germany’s ceiling to 192 tonnes and 484 kilograms.^{[11][11]11Business of CannabisGermany expands its medical cannabis import cap as Australia moves to cut backOpen source ↗} The year’s imports finished above even that, at just over 200 tonnes.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗}

The estimate resets each year through the same filing process. A market that outgrew its ceiling once already now depends on that process keeping pace, and the weeks in autumn 2025 when approvals stopped show what the number means in practice: the limit is set abroad, and the route waits on it.

Read as a trade story, Germany is a large and growing buyer. Read as a supply chain, it is more particular: an import route with one transformation in the middle and a permit at every step. The pace cooled early in 2026, when first-quarter imports of 50,539 kg marked the first quarterly decline in two years, and the structure did not change with it: the route stayed a chain of permits, and domestic farms still supplied a small fraction of the total.^{[1][1]1BfArMMedizinalcannabisverkehr – Ein-/Ausfuhr (Stand: 1. Quartal 2026)Open source ↗}

For a farm abroad, the useful conclusion is about what German buyers pay for. They pay for the ability to deliver the same crop, prepared to the same standard, batch after batch, into a system that another company will import and certify. The route is licensed at every step and metered by a limit set overseas. Germany imports its medicine, and the businesses that matter to this market are the ones that keep the imports flowing.