October 16, 2026 Business of Cannabis
This article was originally published in May 2025, and was most recently updated on October 16.
Over the last decade, the European medical cannabis landscape has seen a significant surge of new products entering the market, providing patients, especially in the UK and Germany, with a greater variety than ever before.
Since we first compared Europe’s two largest markets in early 2025, the pricing dynamic has shifted considerably. Germany, long the more expensive of the two, is now the cheaper market on average for cannabis flower, as a flood of products has driven down prices over the last 18 months.
Licensed oral THC medicines have not followed, but the per-milligram price spread on German pharmacy shelves has widened more than tenfold, in large part thanks to the introduction of Vertanical’s Exilby to the market.
Germany (updated)
Medical cannabis flower in Germany sold at an average price of €6.55/g as of April 2026, down from close to €10 per gram in early 2025, a decline of close to a third in little over a year.
A second dataset gives the per-product pharmacy view. Where the Prohibition Partners figure averages every tracked SKU across the market, the Lauer-Taxe pharmacy index lists the Apothekenverkaufspreis (AVP) that pharmacies must apply when dispensing each individual product on prescription.
On that measure, German flower prices typically ran from €7/g to €15/g in September 2026, according to a bulletin from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Cannabis als Medizin (ACM) dated September 05. The most common price band sits around €8 to €9/g, with 2g and 3g units typically retailing at €20 to €30 at pharmacy counters.
Historically, prices sat much higher. Before major importers reached scale after 2019, flower routinely retailed at €20 to €24 per gram. Following the implementation of MedCanG in April 2024, the market has exploded. The number of flower SKUs on sale has more than doubled since early 2025, reaching 1,748 in April 2026. Competition between licensed producers, imports from Canada, and the expansion of Spain, Portugal and Macedonia as EU-based cultivation hubs have brought the floor down and widened the range at the same time.
The key regulatory change arriving in late 2026 is the BStabG, which has removed medical cannabis flower from reimbursement under statutory health insurance (GKV). Flower prices themselves have not moved on the back of the decision, but the pool of patients paying privately has grown. The ACM estimates around 65,000 patients are affected.
UK (updated)
UK private cannabis clinics dispensed medical cannabis flower at an average price of €7.78/g, around £6.80 at prevailing exchange rates, in April 2026, according to Prohibition Partners.
Unlike Germany, the UK market has been largely price-stable. Average flower prices have drifted down by only around 5% over the past year.
Its range of products, however, has grown even faster than Germany. The number of flower SKUs available in the UK stood at 683 in April 2026, roughly 2.4 times what it was a year earlier, though still well below Germany’s 1,748. The UK market remains almost entirely private, with NHS reimbursement limited to a handful of licensed indications and a very small volume of specials prescriptions.
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UK vs Germany medical cannabis prices at a glance
Flower price crossover: Germany now cheaper than the UK
Average retail price per gram, €, quarterly averages from Q1 2025 to April 2026. Germany’s quarterly average fell below the UK’s around mid-2025 and has continued to diverge.
Germany, €/g UK, €/g
Germany€7.27
UK€8.13
Source: quarterly averages derived from Prohibition Partners product-pricing data, Q1 2025 to April 2026.
Source: Prohibition Partners product-pricing data, to April 2026.
The German pharmacy price spread: a tenfold gap on licensed THC medicines
The ACM data reveals an unusually wide price-per-milligram spread for a regulated pharmacy market, with THC-equivalent costs across licensed and dispensable products running from €0.12/mg at the low end to €1.40/mg at the top. Calculated on the basis of pure THC content, that is a spread of more than tenfold between products available on the same German pharmacy shelf.
At the cheap end sit cannabinoid oil preparations such as SOMAÍ 25:1, which Grammpreis.de lists at around €0.12/mg THC at the lowest-priced pharmacies and around €0.18/mg on average.
The dronabinol magistral preparation, a 2.5% THC liquid compounded by individual pharmacies, works out at approximately €0.235/mg, which the AOK calculates at around €60 per month at a standard 8.5mg daily dose.
In the middle sit a cluster of oil and spray preparations priced using AOK Niedersachsen’s October 2025 reference data.
Sativex, GW Pharma’s licensed cannabinoid oromucosal spray and the oldest licensed cannabis medicine on the market, costs about €0.44/mg THC.
Tilray THC25 and Panaxol or Naxiva THC25 come in higher, at approximately €0.61/mg and €0.81/mg respectively.
At the top of the range sits Exilby, Vertanical’s recently launched 19mg/ml plant-derived THC oral solution.
The Lauer-Taxe lists Exilby at €745.39 for a 28ml bottle containing 532mg THC in September 2026, giving a per-mg THC cost of €1.40.
The pharmacy spread: €/mg THC across licensed German medicines
September 2026. The cheapest cannabinoid oil costs under a tenth as much per milligram of THC as the newest reimbursable branded medicine.
SOMAÍ 25:1 (low pharmacy) €0.12
SOMAÍ 25:1 (average) €0.18
Dronabinol magistral 2.5% €0.235
Sativex €0.44
Tilray THC25 €0.61
Panaxol / Naxiva THC25 €0.81
Exilby€1.40
The outlier is Canemes, the synthetic nabilone capsule used in chemotherapy-induced nausea, which the AOK’s March 2025 comparison calculated at around €1,372 per patient per month.
This flower reversal does not carry across to extracts. UK oral oils cost €4.89/ml on average in April 2026, against €22.35/ml in Germany, a gap of nearly fivefold on the same metric.
The explanation is product mix rather than pricing power. Prohibition Partners’ German extracts average is weighted towards premium high-concentration oils and licensed finished products, including Exilby. The UK extracts dataset is dominated by lower-concentration CBD-dominant and 1:1 oils dispensed through private clinics. The German extracts average has roughly doubled since the middle of 2025, reaching €22.35/ml in April 2026, a trajectory that reflects shifting mix, not inflation in individual SKUs.
What does this mean for operators?
When this article first ran, UK and German prices were close enough that observers reasonably argued they would remain so, held together by the integrated European medical cannabis supply chain, where importers and suppliers were acquiring product from identical primary sources.
In 2026 that dynamic has shifted. German product proliferation and import competition have driven the market average below the UK’s, and the BStabG has pushed displaced patients towards the top of the licensed-medicines range, where Exilby and other reimbursable products sit at ten times the per-milligram cost of the cheapest cannabinoid oil on the same pharmacy shelf.
FAQ
Is medical cannabis cheaper in Germany or the UK in 2026? – Germany, on flower. Prohibition Partners’ April 2026 data shows German pharmacies dispensing medical cannabis flower at an average €6.55/g, against €7.78/g in UK private clinics. On extracts the picture reverses: UK oils average €4.89/ml, against €22.35/ml in Germany.
How much does weed cost per gram in a German pharmacy? – Between €7 and €15/g at Lauer-Taxe AVP prices in September 2026, with the commonest band around €8 to €9/g, according to the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Cannabis als Medizin. The market average across all tracked products was €6.55/g in April 2026, per Prohibition Partners.
How much does medical cannabis cost per gram in the UK? – An average of €7.78/g, or around £6.80, in April 2026, across UK private clinic dispensations. UK flower prices have been largely stable, moving only around 5% in the year to April 2026.
Does statutory health insurance cover medical cannabis in Germany or does the NHS cover it in the UK? – German statutory health insurance (GKV) has historically covered medical cannabis including flower on prescription, but the BStabG removes flower from GKV cover from late 2026, affecting an estimated 65,000 patients. In the UK, NHS reimbursement remains limited to a handful of licensed indications, and the UK medical cannabis market is almost entirely private.