Germany's beer market is in decline. Domestic brewers' output fell below the 80-million-hectoliter mark for the first time last year, according to hop and hop-products specialist BarthHaas, which released its findings on Tuesday. Production dropped to 79.24 million hectoliters, a decline of around 5.6 percent. That means the German brewing industry is faring worse than the global market as a whole.
Worldwide beer production totaled roughly 1.896 billion hectoliters in 2025, some 0.7 percent less than the previous year, BarthHaas reported. With a few exceptions, the beer market saw a net negative development on nearly every continent, the exception being Africa, which recorded a slight increase in volume.
"In many traditional markets in particular, beer consumption is stagnating or declining, while non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beverages are gaining in importance," explained BarthHaas managing director Thomas Raiser.
In Germany, "losses on a scale we could not have anticipated" were recorded, said Heinrich Meier, author of BarthHaas's annual report. Even so, Germany once again ranked sixth among the world's brewing nations, according to the company. China, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia remain in the top five spots.
Germany's poor performance also affected the European Union's overall figures, the report found. Output fell by 3.1 percent to around 333.6 million hectoliters. A significant drop in production in Poland also weighed on the result.
Despite everything, Germany remained the world's largest hop-growing country, according to BarthHaas, with 18,962 hectares under cultivation, even though its growing area shrank by 6.5 percent. The United States followed in second place with 17,057 hectares.
Global hop-growing area and harvest volumes also declined, the report noted. Even so, hop production continued to exceed demand. "Contributing factors included the lower beer output, a reduced hop dosage in the brewing process, and changes in the structure of beer styles," the company explained.
The global hop and beer industry is in a "phase of profound structural change," said managing director Raiser. "Persistent oversupply is meeting changed consumption behavior and rising economic pressure along the entire value chain." He said what matters now is how adaptable the industry remains.
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