The succession wave in figures — what is actually coming for the German Mittelstand

The Institut für Mittelstandsforschung Bonn estimates that around 186,000 companies in Germany face a handover between 2026 and 2030 — some 4,000 fewer than in the preceding five-year period. The reason for this stagnation is notable: owners keep ageing, but earnings have weakened at many companies, and only companies whose profits make a takeover economically sensible enter the estimate.

That framing matters more than it sounds. Of roughly 3.6 million companies in Germany, about 3.2 million are family businesses. Of those, 733,000 qualify as worth taking over under the IfM definition, and the 186,000 come from exactly that group. This is not about every company, but about profitable family businesses whose owners are stepping back for reasons of age.

It is an estimate, not a count. The IfM discloses its method and bases it on official data — the business register, VAT statistics, the microcensus, Bundesbank financial statements. Anyone citing the figure should label it as an estimate.

KfW arrives at an entirely different order of magnitude in its succession monitoring: by the end of 2029, around 545,000 of the 3.87 million Mittelstand companies intend to hand over, roughly 109,000 a year. That figure is not wrong, and neither is the IfM one. They measure different things.

KfW works with a deliberately broad definition of the Mittelstand reaching up to 500 million euros in turnover and including micro-enterprises and the self-employed. It also records intentions: these are owners' plans, not completed handovers. The IfM, by contrast, estimates handovers actually due at profitable family businesses.

The two figures must therefore neither be added together nor played off against each other. Wherever they appear side by side, that distinction belongs with them — otherwise a picture emerges that neither source supports.

The most telling development lies in the age structure. In 2025, 57 per cent of Mittelstand owners were 55 or older — more than two million people. In 2003 that share was 20 per cent. It has therefore almost tripled in a good twenty years.

36 per cent of owners were older than 60 in 2025; in 2003 it was 12 per cent. The average age now stands at just over 54, against 45 twenty years ago.

The single figure I find most striking sits somewhat buried in the same study: those seeking a handover in the short term, by the end of 2026, are on average already 66.5 years old — above the statutory retirement age. For many, the lead time is not short. It is already spent.

In the succession advisory service of the German chambers of industry and commerce, 9,636 companies seeking a successor were counselled in 2024, against 4,016 prospective buyers. Arithmetically, that means more than two companies for every interested party.

This frequently quoted ratio needs a caveat that is usually dropped: it is a ratio within chamber advisory work, not an economy-wide excess of supply. Sellers seek advice far more often than buyers do, and many handovers happen without a chamber at all — through the family, through the workforce, through advisers.

One value from the same source does suggest, however, that a shortage of buyers is not the whole story: 49 per cent of senior owners had not yet found a suitable successor at the time of counselling — and prospective buyers report almost exactly the same share at 48 per cent. When both sides of the market fail to find each other in equal measure, the problem is less scarcity than matching.

The gap is widening: 5,620 companies in chamber advisory work had no potential candidate in 2024, a record high. It has almost doubled since 2019.

By the end of 2029, around 569,000 Mittelstand owners plan not to continue their company after stepping back, equivalent to some 114,000 closures a year. In 2025, one in four Mittelstand companies is considering a deliberate wind-down.

Precision pays here. These figures largely describe planned, deliberate closures — the most common reason, at 52 per cent, is simply reaching retirement age, not a failed search for a successor. Presenting them as failures overstates the case.

For the short horizon, KfW gives a figure it rates as highly reliable itself: around 243,000 Mittelstand companies still economically active at the time of the survey would leave the market by the end of 2026 without a succession arrangement — provided all owners with closure plans actually carry them out. That condition belongs with the number.

Of the companies aiming to complete a handover within the next two years, around 14 per cent must reckon with their plans failing, with delays expected at a further 21 per cent. This too is not a measured failure rate but an inference from how far planning has progressed: some have not entered the process at all, others have so far only gathered information.

For Rhineland-Palatinate, the IfM estimates around 8,800 companies facing a handover between 2026 and 2030. Measured against the stock of companies, that is 52 handovers per 1,000 — precisely the national average, within a range from 40 in Berlin to 61 in Lower Saxony.

This is a finding that cuts against the obvious narrative, which is why it stands here: no special regional role can be argued from this figure. Relative to its stock of companies, Rhineland-Palatinate is an average federal state. Anyone claiming something exceptional here would have to evidence it differently.

A survey by Hochschule Mainz together with the chambers of Rhineland-Palatinate and the state economics ministry arrives at around 9,000 companies over the coming five years — an order of magnitude that supports the independently derived IfM estimate. Two thirds of respondents have no concrete handover plans yet.

The most interesting value in that survey concerns the effect of advice: around 60 per cent of those who had already sought counselling had concrete succession plans. Without counselling the share is well below 20 per cent. It is a voluntary survey through chamber channels, so not a random sample — the gap is remarkable nonetheless.

Four questions cannot be answered cleanly with the available studies, and naming that seems more honest to me than estimating.

First: how many jobs are affected. The current IfM edition gives no figure. Numbers in circulation come from older editions covering different periods and cannot be transferred to 2026 to 2030.

Second: the share of owners over 65. KfW does not break down its top age bracket beyond over 60.

Third: how long a handover actually takes on average. No study measures this. What is evidenced is only how late businesses seek help — three quarters of companies counselled by the chambers come forward two years or less before the intended handover — and what the chambers recommend, namely three to ten years of lead time. A recommendation is not a measured average.

Fourth: how many businesses in the Koblenz chamber district are affected. The estimate stops at state level. Scaling the state figure down to a chamber district would be methodologically inadmissible, and the calculation would not survive professional scrutiny.

IfM Bonn, Daten und Fakten No. 37: Unternehmensnachfolgen in Deutschland 2026 bis 2030, published November 2025. Available at ifm-bonn.org.

KfW Research, Fokus Volkswirtschaft No. 526: Nachfolge-Monitoring Mittelstand 2025, published 9 January 2026, surveyed in spring 2025 on the basis of the KfW Mittelstandspanel. Available at kfw.de.

DIHK, Report Unternehmensnachfolge 2025, published in 2025 on the basis of chamber advisory statistics for 2024. Available at dihk.de.

Hochschule Mainz together with the chambers of industry and commerce and the skilled crafts chambers of Rhineland-Palatinate and the state economics ministry: Nachfolgestudie 2025, published 30 April 2025.

Research current as of August 2026. Where newer editions have since appeared, their values apply.