# Fastest-Growing Online Category in Germany > Health care (pharmacy) items grew their share of German online baskets by +15.3% year-on-year, while electronics shed −11.2% — the widest divergence among the top 8 online verticals. Jan–Oct 2025 vs. 2026 **Period:** Jan–Oct 2025 vs. Jan–Oct 2026 **Market:** DE **Data status:** final **Data as of:** 2026-11-04T06:32:28.1738+00:00 **Sample size:** n = 7,539 **Effective sample size:** 2,455 **Source:** [https://www.generalevidence.com/en/insights/consumption/product-categories/pharmacy-electronics-share-shift-germany-2026](https://www.generalevidence.com/en/insights/consumption/product-categories/pharmacy-electronics-share-shift-germany-2026) ## Segments - **Years:** 2025–2026 - **Platform:** purchases - **Product categories:** fb, aa, hg, el, hb, ae, ap ## Summary Pharmacy is now the single fastest-growing online vertical in Germany — its share of purchased items rose +15.3% year-on-year (confidence range: +6.8% to +23.6%), a gain that is both statistically clear and commercially significant. Among the top 8 online verticals by purchase volume, no other category comes close: food & beverages grew a modest +6.3%, home & garden +1.7%, while fashion was essentially flat at −2.0%. ## The e-prescription and medical cannabis effect The pharmacy surge is structural, not seasonal. Germany's e-prescription rollout — which became mandatory for all statutory insurers in 2024 — made online pharmacies into routine infrastructure rather than a convenience option. Online pharmacy revenue grew nearly 10% in Q1 2026 alone, the strongest increase since e-prescriptions were introduced, according to bevh data. Within pharmacy, medical cannabis is driving an outsized share of new buyers: the share of online health-care shoppers who purchased medical cannabis rose from 4.7% to 7.3% between Jan–Oct 2025 and Jan–Oct 2026 — see [Medical cannabis buyers in Germany](slug:medical-cannabis-online-buyers-germany-2026) for the full breakdown. Germany's medical cannabis market, valued at roughly €1 billion in 2025, more than doubled in a year as the April 2024 Cannabis Act removed cannabis from narcotics classification and opened telemedicine-based prescribing at scale. Electronics' decline — the steepest in the ranking at −11.2% — mirrors industry data: the German electronics market contracted 2.5% in revenue in H1 2026, with consumer electronics down 3.2%. Spending is shifting from big-ticket, infrequent purchases toward replenishment categories like health, food, and drugstore. Drugstore items (personal care) were flat at −3.2%, consistent with bevh reporting drugstore growth in revenue terms — a discrepancy explained by falling unit prices rather than falling demand. ## Chart Horizontal bar chart showing the year-on-year change in item-share for the 8 largest German online retail verticals, comparing Jan–Oct 2026 to Jan–Oct 2025. Health care (pharmacy) leads at +15.3%, food & beverages follows at +6.3%, while electronics falls the most at −11.2%. Fashion and personal care (drugstore) are near-flat at −2.0% and −3.2% respectively. ## Methodology The analysis tracks a fixed group of German online shoppers who made at least one physical-goods purchase in both Jan–Oct 2025 and Jan–Oct 2026. Purchase records come from email order confirmations, Amazon order exports, and browsing-inferred checkouts; in-store receipts, digital goods, and restaurant orders are excluded. Each purchase is assigned to one of the top 8 online verticals by 2025 purchase volume, using a standardised retail taxonomy (health care covers pharmacy and OTC products; personal care covers drugstore). The metric is each vertical's share of total purchased line items in each window — not raw counts — because share change isolates relative growth independently of overall order-volume shifts. Year-on-year change is the 2026 share divided by the 2025 share, minus one. Estimates are weighted to reflect the German online-shopping population by age, gender, region, education, and income. The confidence range is derived from 300-draw user-level resampling. ## Citation General Evidence (2026-11-04). *Fastest-Growing Online Category in Germany*. General Evidence Insights. https://www.generalevidence.com/en/insights/consumption/product-categories/pharmacy-electronics-share-shift-germany-2026 ## About General Evidence General Evidence is a behavioral consumer-data platform. The Insights library publishes free, citable statistics derived from a panel of 29,000+ opted-in participants in Germany: observed real behavior (transactions, browsing, media), not surveys. All data is processed within the EU and is GDPR-compliant. For brand-specific cuts, competitor benchmarks, and granular audience filters across 12,000+ tracked brands, see [https://www.generalevidence.com/en](https://www.generalevidence.com/en).