Unlocking the GLP-1 Ecosystem

Roughly 100,000 Germans are currently in treatment. Fifteen million live with obesity. That gap is not a demand problem. Over half of German adults have overweight and 19% have obesity, and more than four million households are already using or considering treatment. What separates Germany from the UK and the US is access, not appetite: medicines prescribed primarily for weight loss sit outside statutory reimbursement under 34 SGB V, leaving most patients to self-fund at roughly 3,400 euros a year for Wegovy and almost 6,000 euros for Mounjaro. Germany is not a structurally weak GLP-1 market. It is a large market whose adoption curve has been delayed.

One number reframes the whole picture. The share of German GP practices prescribing approved anti-obesity medicines to patients without diabetes rose from 7% in 2019 to 93% in 2025, while the average practice still treated only thirteen patients. Broad awareness, shallow penetration.

And the drug market is the smaller number. We estimate 25 to 35 billion euros of annual economic value materially influenced in Germany by 2035, three to four times the pharmaceutical market itself. This is not a new category to enter. It is a redistribution of consumer spending, healthcare activity and financial risk around millions of people.

In this paper

• Why Germany reads as a weak GLP-1 market on the surface, and what the prescribing data says instead.
• Our base case for 2035: 3.2 to 4.0 million people in treatment and an 8 to 10 billion euro drug market.
• The four value pools around the therapy, from care and adherence to the insurance and employer economics that are the largest of them.
• Why the obvious move, a GLP-1 version of what you already sell, is also the most expensive one.