At a glance
| Germany | |
|---|---|
| Applications | 916 |
| Licences | 494 |
| refused | 94 |
| withdrawn | 143 |
| revoked | 9 |
| still pending (calculated) | 185 |
As of 1 October 2026 in 13 of the 16 states, 4 August in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 3 September in Saarland and 25 July 2026 in Saxony. The figures were reported by the state authorities to the Federal Association of Cannabis Cultivation Associations (BCAv). There is no official national figure; the Federal Government itself refers to these figures. The pending applications are calculated: applications minus licences, refusals and withdrawals.
Just over half of all applications have led to a licence so far (494 of 916). Almost one in three licences is in North Rhine-Westphalia.
By state
Licences are granted by the states. How many there are relative to the population varies widely:
| State | Licences | per 1 million inhabitants | Applications |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 144 | 8.0 | 254 |
| Lower Saxony | 104 | 13.0 | 152 |
| Baden-Württemberg | 38 | 3.4 | 121 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 34 | 8.2 | 54 |
| Saxony | 29 | 7.2 | 37 |
| Brandenburg | 25 | 9.8 | 43 |
| Hesse | 23 | 3.7 | 36 |
| Hamburg | 18 | 9.6 | 28 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 18 | 8.5 | 26 |
| Berlin | 16 | 4.3 | 43 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 12 | 4.1 | 30 |
| Bavaria | 11 | 0.8 | 47 |
| Thuringia | 9 | 4.3 | 19 |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 7 | 4.4 | 10 |
| Bremen | 5 | 7.1 | 8 |
| Saarland | 1 | 1.0 | 8 |
| Germany | 494 | 5.9 | 916 |
Lower Saxony has the highest figure, with 13.0 licences per million inhabitants, and Bavaria the lowest, with 0.8, just below Saarland (1.0). The national average is 5.9.
Nationwide, 94 applications have been refused, most of them in Lower Saxony (30) and Baden-Württemberg (20). Associations have withdrawn 143 applications, most of them in North Rhine-Westphalia (47).
| State | refused | withdrawn |
|---|---|---|
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 2 | 47 |
| Baden-Württemberg | 20 | 22 |
| Lower Saxony | 30 | 5 |
| Bavaria | 6 | 25 |
| Berlin | 11 | 14 |
| Brandenburg | 7 | 6 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 1 | 11 |
| Hamburg | 4 | 3 |
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 3 | 4 |
| Thuringia | 5 | 0 |
| Saarland | 2 | 1 |
| Saxony | 0 | 3 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 2 | 1 |
| Bremen | 0 | 1 |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 1 | 0 |
| Hesse | 0 | 0 |
| Germany | 94 | 143 |
Development since 2025
New applications keep coming in, but more slowly: from October 2025 to October 2026, 157 applications and 157 licences were added, compared with 239 applications and 213 licences in the nine months before that.
Applications and licences in Germany
- Licences
- Applications
| As of | Applications | Licences |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | 520 | 124 |
| Feb 2025 | 563 | 141 |
| May 2025 | 626 | 215 |
| Jul 2025 | 696 | 273 |
| Oct 2025 | 759 | 337 |
| Dec 2025 | 791 | 357 |
| Jan 2026 | 806 | 368 |
| Apr 2026 | 838 | 401 |
| Jun 2026 | 866 | 430 |
| Oct 2026 | 916 | 494 |
How many members?
There is no official figure. The only fixed figure is the upper limit of 500 members per cultivation association (§ 16 para. 2 KCanG). Mathematically, the 494 cultivation associations could therefore have no more than 247,000 members. How many there actually are is not known.
North Rhine-Westphalia in detail
Figures by district government, the cultivation associations in the Ruhr and the maximum number NRW permits are given under Cultivation associations in NRW.
Where the figures come from
- BCAv: application and licence figures (monthly survey of the state authorities), as of 1 October 2026
- Internet Archive: earlier versions of the same page, January 2025 to June 2026
- German Bundestag, printed paper 21/1093: reply of the Federal Government of 29 July 2025
- Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Länder: area and population, population as of 2025 based on the 2022 census
- Consumer Cannabis Act (KCanG), § 16
In two older versions, the heading of the BCAv table differs from its total row (July 2025 and June 2026). We use the total row. The states report at different times, so one row mixes figures from several weeks. We update the figures as soon as new data are published. Last updated: 27 October 2026.