Five takeaways from the Global Medical Cannabis Market Review 2026

The clearest finding in this year's review is how far medical demand has consolidated around a small number of regulated markets. In Europe — the region we size in the greatest depth — total medical sales reach an estimated €1.29 billion in 2025 and are forecast to exceed €2.78 billion by 2029, a compound annual growth rate of just over 20%. That growth is real, but it is not evenly distributed: Germany and the United Kingdom together account for roughly 85% of European medical sales in 2025.

The second takeaway is that regulation, not demand, remains the binding constraint. Germany's growth since the MedCanG law of April 2024 — which removed cannabis from the narcotics list and cut prescribing bureaucracy — shows what happens when the brake comes off: we estimate the market at over €836 million in 2025, with more than 720,000 patients. Italy, by contrast, holds a state-controlled supply model, and Poland tightened telemedicine prescribing rules in late 2024. The regulatory posture, more than any demand-side variable, determines the slope of each national forecast.

Third, the map is still widening. Of the 31 European markets we track, 24 are active in 2025; our forecasts have Ukraine activating in 2026, France, Austria and Croatia in 2027, and Albania, Romania and Slovakia in 2028. Individually these are small markets at activation — France reaches an estimated €17.9 million and roughly 28,000 patients by 2029 — but collectively they extend the growth runway well beyond the current leaders.

Finally, the patient base is the number to watch. Registered patients are the demand floor under every sales forecast, and the trajectories diverge sharply by market: Germany's patient base roughly doubles to nearly 1.5 million by 2029, while the UK's grows from around 91,000 to more than 237,000. Where patient growth outruns supply-side liberalisation, the gap tends to close through imports and telemedicine — a pattern that recurs across the review.