German courts registered 2,373 applications for corporate insolvency in July 2026, marking an 8.0 percent increase compared to the previous year. However, it is important to note that these applications are logged in statistics only after receiving the initial ruling from the insolvency court; the actual filing date often predates this by about three months.
Looking at the first seven months of 2026, a total of 15,185 corporate insolvency applications were registered, representing a 6.9 percent rise over the same period last year. The total claims owed by creditors stemming from these corporate insolvencies reached roughly 21.9 billion euros. This amount is a decrease from the approximately 31.8 billion euros noted during the first seven months of 2025. This reduction in total claims, despite the rising number of insolvency filings, is partly attributed to the fact that more economically significant companies filed for bankruptcy in the first seven months of 2025 than were filed in 2026.
Over the reported period of January to July 2026, the overall insolvency rate stood at 42.8 cases per 10,000 companies. The sectors with the highest frequency of insolvencies were Traffic and Storage, which accounted for 85.5 cases per 10,000 companies, followed by the Hospitality sector with 70.0 cases, and the Construction industry with 62.9 cases.
On the consumer side, 7,111 consumer insolvencies were reported in July 2026, a decline of 5.9 percent compared to the previous year’s corresponding month. Across the January to July 2026 period, a total of 46,043 consumer insolvencies were logged, reflecting a slight increase of 1.0 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.
