The number of organ donations in Germany has risen slightly in the first ten months of this year. From January to October 2025, 836 people donated their organs after death, according to a statement released on Thursday by the German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO) in Frankfurt am Main. During the same period in 2024, there had been 789 organ donors.
By October 2025, a total of 2,738 organs had been transplanted to patients in Germany, nearly 200 more than in the same period last year. Between January and October 2024, 2,557 organs were transplanted across the country.
Organs donated in Germany and other countries are removed and then distributed through the international coordination agency Eurotransplant, which oversees allocation for transplants both within Germany and abroad. The total number of organs retrieved in Germany, distributed via Eurotransplant, and subsequently transplanted reached 2,523 between January and October 2025, compared with 2,391 in the same period of 2024.
“The slight increase in organ donation compared with the previous year is encouraging for patients on the waiting lists,” said Axel Rahmel, Medical Director of the DSO. “However, this does not represent a fundamental turnaround in organ donation,” he added. Rahmel also pointed out that the figures once again revealed significant regional disparities. Some regions, particularly in the northeast of Germany, recorded a decline in donations, while other federal states saw modest increases.
Of the 2,963 potential organ donations reported in Germany between January and October 2025, the majority, 2,127 cases, could not be realized. According to Rahmel, the most common reason was the lack of consent from relatives. In about every second case, organ removal failed due to missing approval, even before medical reasons were taken into account.
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