Germany runs more cannabis-adjacent trade fairs than any other country in Europe, and most of them will not put a single raw-material buyer in front of you. This is a working calendar of every relevant German event from September 2026 to November 2027, built by reading each organiser’s own site rather than aggregator listings — including the events that show up in search results but no longer exist. It is written for growers and exporters in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and the wider region who are deciding where a travel budget actually pays back.
Four events where raw-material buyers are in the room
Out of twenty-one German and neighbouring events surveyed, four put you in front of people who sign supply contracts.
IPM ESSEN — 26–29 January 2027, Messe Essen. The world’s leading horticulture trade fair, running since 1983. The 2026 edition had 1,476 exhibitors, around 40,000 visitors from 41 countries. This is the room for growing inputs, substrates, propagation material and equipment — not for finished flower. It is also the only major fair in this list that publishes stand rental openly: for 2027, €188 per square metre for a row stand, €194 corner, €199 head, €200 block, plus €0.60 per square metre AUMA levy, a €379 mandatory media package, and a €10 per square metre energy and environmental surcharge capped at 150 square metres. Early-bird rates that closed on 31 May 2026 were €5 to €6 lower per square metre. All figures exclude VAT and come from the organiser’s registration page.
CPHI Frankfurt — 9–11 November 2027, Messe Frankfurt. This is where EU-GMP pharmaceutical ingredient buyers and contract manufacturers go. The 2025 Milan edition drew 62,000 participants and more than 2,900 exhibitors from 166 countries; Frankfurt 2027 figures are not yet published. Stand pricing is not public and is quoted per enquiry.
ICBC Berlin — 13–15 April 2027, Estrel Berlin. Running in Berlin since 2016, this is the largest cannabis business event in the EU and the one place in this list where growing-side and pharma-side people are in the same building. The organiser states 7,500-plus attendees, 500-plus exhibitors and sponsors, and over 25,000 square metres. Those numbers are the organiser’s own and are not independently audited. Stand pricing is not published — exhibitors must request a quote.
Bernburger Winterseminar — 23–24 February 2027, Bernburg (Saale), 37th edition. Around 220 people, eight to ten countries, with a small exhibition area. By headcount it is the smallest event on this list and by relevance it is arguably the sharpest: it is the highest concentration of medicinal and aromatic plant GACP specialists in Germany, run by Saluplanta since 1990. If your question is “how do I make my GACP documentation acceptable to a European buyer”, this is the room, not ICBC.
Before you book anything: GACP is not an entry ticket
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding among Asian growers approaching the German market, and it is worth stating plainly before the calendar.
Layer one — GACP. Good Agricultural and Collection Practices covers cultivation and harvest at farm level. It does not cover pharmaceutical-grade post-harvest processing, batch release, or import. A farm holding GACP still cannot sell flower into Germany. There is also no single EU-wide GACP certificate; recognition is handled nationally.
Layer two — EU-GMP batch release. Every batch must be tested and released by a Qualified Person at an EU-GMP licensed manufacturing site before it reaches the German market. In practice this is done by the importer or by an EU contract facility, not by the farm.
Layer three — the German licence. This is where most published guidance, including material circulating in Southeast Asia, is now out of date. Medical cannabis in Germany has not been governed by §3 of the Narcotics Act (BtMG) since 1 April 2024. The Medizinal-Cannabisgesetz (MedCanG) took effect that day as Article 2 of the Cannabisgesetz, and cannabis was removed from the BtMG annexes entirely. The correct reference today is a §4 MedCanG operating licence, issued by the Federal Opium Agency at BfArM, plus a separate per-shipment import authorisation for each consignment. If a prospective partner still describes their permission as a §3 BtMG licence, that is a signal to ask questions, not a credential.
The practical consequence for trade fairs: do not carry physical flower samples to any German event without a partner who holds the import licence in their own name. Carry certificates of analysis, GACP documentation, farm records and photographs instead. Consumer-facing fairs such as Mary Jane, Cannafair and CannaFriends also impose their own product-display rules, which differ per event and must be checked individually.
What changed in the German market in 2026
Two developments shape who is buying and how much, and both are recent enough that they have not reached most export advisory material yet.
Since 30 July 2026, dried cannabis flower is no longer covered by statutory health insurance. The GKV-Beitragssatzstabilisierungsgesetz, published in the Federal Law Gazette on 29 July 2026, removed flower from the special entitlement under §31(6) SGB V. Flower can still be prescribed, but on private prescription with the patient paying. Extracts, dronabinol and nabilone remain covered. The government projected savings of roughly €130 million, which is a rough proxy for the volume of demand that moved from reimbursed to self-paid.
A second bill amending the MedCanG — restricting telemedicine prescribing and banning mail-order sale of flower — was introduced as Bundestag printed paper 21/3061 in December 2025. As of the most recent tracking available in July 2026 it had not been called for a vote before the summer recess and remained in committee, with observers expecting late 2026 at the earliest. Anyone reading this after October 2026 should check its current status rather than rely on this paragraph. Note that the proposed restrictions target dispensing to patients, not §4 MedCanG import licensing.
Separately, a Federal Court of Justice ruling of 26 March 2026 (case I ZR 74/25) restricts public advertising for cannabis treatment under §10 of the Medicines Advertising Act. This affects how German partners can market, and by extension what they will accept in co-branded material.
Full calendar, September 2026 to November 2027
Dates and venues below were taken from each organiser’s own website unless the last column says otherwise.
| Date | Event | City | Who is in the room | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15–17 Sep 2026 | expopharm | Munich | German pharmacy channel | Organiser |
| 15–17 Sep 2026 | CB Expo (within InterTabac) | Dortmund | Business-to-business, CBD trade | Organiser |
| 25–27 Sep 2026 | CannaFriends | Ilsede | Small regional | Organiser |
| 2–4 Oct 2026 | Cultiva HANFEXPO (Austria) | Vienna | Growshop trade, German-speaking region | Organiser |
| 6–8 Oct 2026 | CPHI (Italy) | Milan | EU pharmaceutical ingredients | Organiser |
| 23–24 Oct 2026 | Hemp Building Symposium | Stuttgart | Hemp construction materials | Third-party only |
| 6–8 Nov 2026 | Cannafest (Czechia) | Prague | Central European trade and public | Organiser |
| 16–19 Nov 2026 | MEDICA and COMPAMED | Düsseldorf | Medical devices — not relevant | Organiser |
| 17–19 Nov 2026 | Fi Europe and Hi Europe | Frankfurt | Botanical extracts, nutraceuticals | Organiser |
| 26–29 Jan 2027 | IPM ESSEN | Essen | Growing inputs and equipment | Organiser |
| 16–19 Feb 2027 | BIOFACH and VIVANESS | Nuremberg | Organic certified goods only | Organiser |
| 23–24 Feb 2027 | Bernburger Winterseminar | Bernburg (Saale) | Medicinal plant GACP specialists | Organiser |
| 12–14 Mar 2027 | Spannabis (Spain) | Bilbao — moved from Barcelona | Genetics and nutrients | Organiser |
| 20–22 Mar 2027 | CNBS Expo | Dortmund | Unclear | Third-party only |
| 13–15 Apr 2027 | ICBC Berlin | Berlin | Cannabis business, both sides | Organiser |
| 30 Apr–2 May 2027 | KONOPEX (Czechia) | Ostrava | Small | Third-party only |
| May 2027 | INTERPHARM | Stuttgart | Congress with a cannabis update track | Organiser, exact dates pending |
| 18–20 May 2027 | Vitafoods Europe (Spain) | Barcelona | Nutraceuticals | Organiser |
| 3–6 Jun 2027 | Mary Jane Berlin | Berlin | Mostly consumer; business day 3 June | Organiser |
| 14–18 Jun 2027 | ACHEMA | Frankfurt | Extraction, GMP and laboratory equipment | Organiser |
| 16–18 Jul 2027 | CannaFestival | Karlsruhe | Too small to justify travel | Organiser |
| 20–22 Aug 2027 | Cannafair | Düsseldorf — Areal Böhler, new venue | Consumer-leaning | Organiser |
| Sep 2027 | expopharm 2027 | Düsseldorf | Pharmacy channel; dates unannounced | Organiser |
| 21–23 Sep 2027 | FACHPACK | Nuremberg | Pharmaceutical-grade packaging | Organiser |
| 9–11 Nov 2027 | CPHI Frankfurt | Frankfurt | EU-GMP ingredient buyers | Organiser |
Events that do not exist
These names appear in search results, aggregator sites and second-hand advice. Each was checked against the brand owner’s own site.
Cannabis Europa has never held a German edition — London and Paris only. CannaCon is a United States event with no German edition. There is no German “International Cannabis Expo”; the name is most likely a confusion with ICBC. Expo Cannabis is a Latin American brand with no German edition. “Mary Jane Netherlands” does not exist; Mary Jane is Berlin only. “Hanfmesse” is an ordinary German noun, not the name of a specific fair. LABVOLUTION in Hanover cancelled its 2025 edition and its domain now redirects to messe.de; the organiser describes the brand as under review, which in practice means discontinued. CannaTrade in Zurich runs every two years, the May 2026 edition has passed and there is no 2027 edition. analytica Munich next runs 25–28 April 2028 and interpack Düsseldorf 10–15 June 2029, both outside this window.
One event worth tracking rather than dismissing: the Medicinal Cannabis Congress in Berlin held its seventh edition on 28–29 May 2026 at Charité. The eighth has not been announced. It reaches the prescribing physician layer, which no trade fair on this list does.
The directory trap, using expopharm as the example
A note for anyone who researches partners through exhibitor directories. expopharm’s 2026 directory holds 551 entries. Filtering it by product group 01.19 Cannabis returns 23 companies; filtering by the topic tag Medizinal Cannabis returns 15; merged, 26. Yet several of Germany’s largest medical cannabis importers and distributors appear in the 551-entry directory without falling into either filter.
The reason is structural, not accidental: exhibitor directory tags are self-declared by the exhibitor, not standardised by the organiser. Searching a directory by the obvious keyword will systematically miss companies that categorised themselves differently.
The same structure cuts the other way and more usefully. The companies worth approaching are often the ones carrying the narcotics-handling tag (Betäubungsmittel) together with the medicinal plants tag (Heilpflanzen), because that combination indicates licensed handling infrastructure rather than commercial interest in cannabis. At expopharm 2026, four companies carried three or four of the relevant tags, and none of them has “cannabis” in its name. Whether any given company actually holds a §4 MedCanG licence still has to be verified directly — a directory tag is a lead, not proof.
What is not verified here
Stated plainly so nobody builds a plan on a gap. Exact 2027 dates for expopharm Düsseldorf and INTERPHARM are unannounced. CNBS Expo Dortmund 2027 and CB Expo 2027 have no official source at all. Stand pricing for CPHI Frankfurt and ICBC Berlin is quote-only and was not obtained. The typical cost and turnaround time for a single batch through EU-GMP release was searched for and no reliable published figure was found — it is negotiated per facility, and anyone quoting a standard price should be asked what it excludes. Floor area for several events, and founding years for CPHI, ACHEMA, MEDICA, Cannafair and Cultiva, were not found on official sources.
Figures for visitor and exhibitor numbers throughout are organiser-published and, except where an audit is stated, not independently verified. Trade fair attendance figures are marketing material as much as measurement.