Germany
Europe's biggest Continental market has hit an auction wall. The 2025 central round drew no bids, the dynamic round collapsed, and the 2026 calendar is suspended while the mechanism is redesigned.
Assessment
as of 2026-06-26Mature. Germany has a large operating fleet in the North Sea and the Baltic and a centralised regime written into the WindSeeG: the state (BSH) pre-investigates and designates sites, then auctions them. It is the largest market on the Continent and the clearest example of the integrated model, where a site and its route to market are awarded together.
Stalled. The WindSeeG sets statutory minimums of 30 GW by 2030, 40 GW by 2035 and 70 GW by 2045, but the auction engine has seized. The 2025 centrally pre-investigated round received no bids at all. The 2025 dynamic round cleared 1,000 MW, against 7,000 MW two years earlier. The 2026 auctions were then suspended to 2027 while the mechanism is reworked. The 2023 move to uncapped negative bidding, with developers paying for the seabed, cleared record sums and then stopped clearing at all once economics tightened, which is what the industry had warned would happen.
Medium. The targets are in law and the political consensus on offshore wind is broad. The contested questions, auction design and the pace of grid expansion, are no longer abstract: the redesign of the mechanism now gates the calendar, and delivery against the statutory dates depends on how it lands.
Mixed. On paper Germany is still one of the largest parts of the European pipeline, and nothing suggests the statutory targets will be dropped. Near-term volumes depend on the reworked auction actually clearing when the calendar resumes in 2027, and on the offshore grid connections keeping pace.
Statutory targets and a centralised regime stand. The binding risk is auction economics, not political will: the 2025 central round drew no bids and the 2026 rounds are suspended to 2027.
- BNetzA · 2025 · verified
- Bundesregierung · 2023 · verified
- BSH · 2026 · moderate
State of the market
as of 2026-10-13Delivered to 13 Oct 2026; expected from then. The 2026 column is 0.9 GW delivered to date plus 1.3 GW still expected this year: 1 farm with a stated completion of 2026 or earlier, 1.0 GW nominal, weighted and spread by its completion-date distribution. 24 GW of live pipeline weights to 14 GW expected to complete; 0.1 GW of that sits beyond 2040 and is not drawn. Projects on hold, and projects with no dated milestone, are modelled and sit in the expected line.
Source: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/germany · data as of 13 Oct 2026
How this line is made
The Expected Buildout line answers one question: of the pipeline announced today, how much actually gets built, and when? It is not a scenario and not a target tracker; it is the database's live pipeline, passed through two filters measured from the industry's own delivery record.
Whether a project completes. Every project in development carries a completion weight, banded Delivering / Expected / Prospective / Fragile. A proposal (a site where no authority has yet granted rights) carries none and sits outside this line entirely; it is listed, not counted. The starting point is the historical completion rate of its lifecycle stage: of projects that reached construction, 97% delivered; financed but not yet building, 92%; consented without financing, 75%; early development, 61%; on hold, 15%. That base rate is then adjusted by what the project has actually secured (offtake, grid, consents, investment decision) and decays if a project sits quiet past its stage's normal dwell time.
When it delivers. Each project also carries a completion-date distribution: a shape, not a single year, right-skewed because offshore wind slips late far more often than it runs early. The peak sits on a rule-based expected date chained from the project's latest achieved milestone; the width of the late tail is fitted to how far past their announced dates real projects actually landed: builders slip tight (60% on time, n=144), financed projects tighter still (76%, n=95), consented-only projects carry the fat tail, with 21% landing three or more years late (n=126). A stated date faster than any comparable project has ever achieved is floored to the achievable window and flagged, never taken at face value.
The line is the sum, across every live project, of capacity × completion weight × the probability it delivers in each year. For projects already under construction, a share of expected capacity is counted at first power, because turbines start generating before a wind farm is fully commissioned, so a market's chart can show capacity arriving a year before a project's stated completion date. Delivered history is metered fact; the line inherits every assumption above and nothing else.
Honest limits. The weights are calibrated on a fleet whose failures have so far been overwhelmingly pre-financing, so completion rates after FID rest on a record with few failures and are ceilings, not guarantees. The slip fitted on consented projects is the loosest (the "three or more years late" bucket spans many years). Policy shocks arrive faster than base rates move; the weights see a stop-work order only as its lifecycle consequences accrue. And the line redistributes as the database learns: it is re-derived on every data refresh, not frozen.
Full per-project workings (each project's weight, band, expected date and distribution) are on its project page. Calibration v2.0-phase0 · generated 2026-10-13; every figure above is read from the generated calibration file, never typed.
Auction outlook
forecast · 1 round trackedAll 2026 auctions suspended to 2027 (FEP amendment 30 Jan 2026) after the 1 Aug 2025 central round (N-10.1/N-10.2) drew ZERO bids. 2027 cluster = N-10.1, N-10.2, N-12.4, N-12.5, N-13.1, N-13.2; only N-10.1 (~2,000 MW) + N-10.2 (~500 MW) volume is officially solid. No firm Gebotstermin yet. the mechanism reform is still in flux — the adopted WindSeeG amendment did NOT add CfDs for centrally pre-examined areas (instead a "second bid component"/entry fee for zero-subsidy bids), but the Bundesrat (June 2026) is pressing for a fresh Offshore Wind Energy Act amendment before the summer recess to int […]
Source: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/germany · data as of 13 Oct 2026
Origination ladder
settled rounds → projectsSource: Hafrok · hafrok.com/markets/germany · data as of 13 Oct 2026
2 sites designated for forecast rounds (2.5 GW) are not in the history ladder — pre-tender zones are the auction outlook's rounds-in-waiting: N-10.1 · N-10.2.