Official insolvency statistics: +7.1% in April — transport, hospitality and construction lead. What buyers should read into it

According to Destatis press release No. 244 of July 10, 2026, German local courts registered 2,276 requested corporate insolvencies in April 2026 — up 7.1% on April 2025. From January to April 2026 there were 8,551 proceedings, 6.7% more than in the prior-year period. Relative to 10,000 companies, that is 24.1 insolvencies in four months.

Important context: applications only enter the statistics after the insolvency court's first decision. The actual filing, Destatis notes, often lies almost three months earlier. The 'April numbers' therefore largely describe filings from the start of the year — more on that below, because this lag is strategically relevant for buyers.

The increase is no outlier — it continues the trend we analysed using the IWH June figures: the supply of acquisition targets out of insolvency is at its highest in roughly two decades.

Courts put creditor claims from corporate insolvencies reported January through April 2026 at around €13.9 billion — down from around €22.5 billion in the same period of 2025. Destatis explicitly attributes the decline to the fact that more economically significant companies filed in 2025.

Translated: the number of proceedings is rising, but the average case is getting smaller. That is precisely the news for buyers. Small and mid-sized proceedings are the terrain where individual buyers, MBI candidates and search funds have realistic chances: purchase prices in the six-to-low-seven-figure range, manageable due diligence, and far less competition from private equity and large strategics, who concentrate on the few big cases.

Look at the headline billions and you see a shrinking market. Look at the case count and you see the opposite: more buyable companies in exactly the size class where most acquisitions actually happen.

Insolvency frequency per 10,000 companies averaged 24.1 from January to April 2026 — with three sectors far above it: transport and logistics at 43.9 cases, hospitality at 41.2 and construction at 35.6.

Transport & logistics: insolvent hauliers and logistics firms come with assets of real standalone value — fleets, EU licences, well-located warehouse space, experienced drivers in a market with chronic driver shortage, and running customer contracts. The usual causes (diesel and wage costs, shipper price pressure) are operationally addressable if the buyer brings utilisation or follow-on business.

Hospitality: here you rarely buy the balance sheet — you buy location, licence, fit-out and staff. In an asset deal out of opened proceedings, the lease and equipment can often be renegotiated on better terms than in a going concern — the administrator wants a fast continuation, landlords want continued use.

Construction: insolvent builders are more complex because of outstanding warranty obligations, but they offer order backlogs, machinery — and, amid the skilled-labour shortage, the most valuable asset of all: experienced, intact crews. The transfer of business under § 613a BGB is the central legal lever here; we covered it in depth in our § 613a guide.

Across all three sectors the same logic applies: the insolvency cause is usually a cost or demand problem of the previous business model — not necessarily of the location, the assets or the workforce. That gap is the acquisition opportunity. Equally: you buy after diligence, not after statistics — legal and tax review remains mandatory.

Destatis itself points out that nearly three months often pass between filing and statistical registration. The proceedings appearing in July's official April statistics have long been public as § 9 announcements — protective measures, appointment of the preliminary administrator and opening orders are published daily.

For buyers this means: react only once a sector shows up in the statistics, and you are competing for cases whose interested-party lists have been closing for weeks. The best first-contact window with the administrator is typically weeks 2 to 6 after the opening order — our guide to contacting administrators covers how that outreach works.

This is exactly the gap a daily radar closes: our platform ingests all German insolvency announcements daily, enriches them with register data, published accounts and web presence, and filters by sector, federal state and proceeding stage. The logistics, hospitality and construction cases the official statistics will count in October are visible there today.