According to preliminary data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of insolvency filings in November 2025 rose by 5.7 percent compared to November of the previous year. This is a continuation of a troubling trend. In the first three quarters of the year, there were 11.7 percent more corporate insolvencies and 8.3 percent more consumer insolvencies than the year before.
In the first nine months of 2025, German district courts registered 18,125 corporate insolvency filings — the highest figure since 2014. Creditor claims from these proceedings were estimated at 40.1 billion euros.
In logistics, paralyzed by supply chain disruptions following the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the insolvency rate is nearly twice the national average (52.2 per 10,000 enterprises). Construction, grappling with rising material costs and labor shortages, is recording bankruptcies on a scale unseen since the debt crisis of 2009.
"Companies cannot withstand the pressure — inflation is devouring margins and credit has become a luxury,"
warns Karl-Heinz Schmidt, chairman of the Association of German Freight Forwarders.
Destatis notes that the statistics cover only "regulated insolvencies" — those conducted under formal court proceedings. Approximately 30 percent of all bankruptcies fall into this category, including those involving individual entrepreneurs such as company co-owners or former self-employed persons. They do not include voluntary liquidations or earlier restructurings, which suggests that the true scale of the problems may be even larger.
The situation of private consumers is no better. In the first through third quarters of 2025, 57,824 personal insolvency filings were submitted — 8.3 percent more than a year earlier. In September, 6,123 cases were recorded, a 7.9 percent increase. This is the cumulative effect of multiple factors: rising mortgage payments (averaging +15 percent since 2023), lost jobs, and savings eroded by inflation.
"Many Germans must choose between their electricity bills and food," says Prof. Anna Berger, a sociologist at the University of Munich.
In 2025, growth in insolvencies is concentrated in the eastern Länder, such as Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where unemployment exceeds 8 percent. The federal government has announced an expansion of assistance programs, including loan subsidies, but opposition critics accuse it of a belated response.
Germany enters 2026 with a projected GDP growth rate of just 0.5 percent, according to the IMF — the lowest in the EU. Destatis notes that the November data are "experimental" — based on current court notifications, with an approximately three-month lag from the actual filing date. The rise in insolvencies in Germany is reverberating across the entire EU. As the largest economy, Germany is dragging down forecasts for the whole eurozone — and this affects Poland as well. "We must diversify our markets before the German recession hits us harder," advise experts from the Polish Economic Institute.
