Warehouse Capacity: Is Europe Ready for Peak?

Every year, the same conversation happens during the same week of September. Someone runs the numbers on inbound volume against available pallet positions, and the answer comes back tighter than expected. Then the scramble starts.

The difference this year is that the market has less slack than it did twelve months ago, and the buffer that used to absorb a late decision is thinning out.

If your Q4 capacity plan is still a draft, this is the moment to finalise it.

Key Takeaways 

• European logistics vacancy could fall below 5% as new supply hits a nine-year low.
• Western corridors such as Brussels to Antwerp are close to full (2.33% vacancy). CEE has more room (up to about 8%) but demand is strong.
• Grid power is now a site-selection constraint, not a detail.
• Contracted space beats verbal commitments. Space secured in August costs less and offers more choice than space secured in November.

How Tight Is the European Warehouse Market Going Into Q4?

European logistics take-up has been recovering steadily. Through 2025, quarterly take-up stabilised between 5 and 6 million square metres, still below the 9.6 million square metre peak recorded in Q4 2021, but a clear improvement on a difficult 2024. Forecasts point to continued moderate growth.

The more interesting number is on the supply side. Only around 3.8% of total European logistics stock was under construction by mid-2025, and twelve-month rolling completions are expected to hit a nine-year low as the development pipeline stays muted. A growing share of completed space is already committed before it opens.

Prologis research estimates Europe needs roughly €150 billion of new logistics space just to meet current consumption levels. The forecast is that European vacancy could fall below 5% if supply pipelines stay constrained and economic growth holds, which would make Europe one of the tightest logistics markets in the world. Prologis also describes power as the new location factor in its 2026 outlook.

None of this is a cliff. It is a slow squeeze, which is precisely why it catches people out. Nothing dramatic happens until the week you need space and there is none available in the corridor where you need it.

Where Is the Pressure Concentrated: Western Europe or CEE?

The averages hide a lot. Utilisation rates remain high in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, leaving very little room for overflow inventory when peak-season volume arrives. In some Western European corridors, availability is effectively nil. Vacancy along Belgium’s Brussels-to-Antwerp corridor stood at 2.33% at the end of 2025.

Central and Eastern Europe reads differently. Vacancy runs higher, at up to around 8% in Poland and the wider CEE region, but absorption is enormously strong, driven by nearshoring from Western Europe. Poland recorded roughly 1.6 million square metres of gross take-up in Q1 2026, up around 40% year-on-year, with net take-up rising by approximately 75%. The vacancy rate stood at 7.2%, with new supply of about 650,000 square metres.

That combination matters more than either figure alone. This is not a market absorbing renewals. New leases and expansions made up a significant share of activity, which means the demand has genuine depth. The Tschechische Republik und Rumänien have both posted strong annual take-up growth as well.

Read together, the picture is of a region with real available capacity and real competition for it.

Why Is Electricity Now a Warehouse Site-Selection Issue?

There is a newer bottleneck that has moved from a technical footnote to a genuine site-selection issue: electricity.

Die meisten europäischen Stromnetze sind nahezu oder vollständig ausgelastet. Da die Verteilzentren zunehmend automatisierter und elektrischer werden, übersteigen ihre Strombedarf die verfügbaren Anschlusskapazitäten. Die Sicherstellung ausreichender Netzkapazitäten für ein modernes, automatisiert nutzbares Lager gilt nun als entscheidend, und in manchen Märkten ist sie die entscheidende Voraussetzung dafür, ob ein Standort überhaupt wirtschaftlich tragbar ist.

For anyone planning capacity that involves automation, refrigeration, or electric vehicle charging infrastructure, power availability needs to be on the checklist alongside floor area and dock doors. It is not a detail that gets sorted out later. The same power constraint is shaping where life science manufacturers build, as we cover in Wo Pharma in den CEE-Ländern tätig ist.

Was die Besetzer tatsächlich verlangen

Where demand is strong, it is concentrated on a fairly specific building profile. Occupiers have consistently favoured high-specification stock: clear heights of 10 to 12 metres, strong floor loading, generous yard depth, and a design that meets environmental certification requirements.

Dafür gibt es einen Grund, der über die Präferenz hinausgeht. Großteil der aktuellen Markttätigkeit spiegelt die Tatsache wider, dass Unternehmen eher umsteigen als expandieren – sie verlagern sich aus älteren, weniger effizienten Gebäuden in Lagerflächen, die tatsächlich für automatisierte, energieintensive Prozesse geeignet sind. Die Netto-Absorptionsrate wird erst 2027 voraussichtlich vollständig wieder ansteigen, gerade weil ein Teil der neuen Mietverträge durch Räumungen an anderen Standorten ausgeglichen wird.

The practical implication: the weakest assets are becoming more exposed, and the best assets are getting taken. If your Q4 plan depends on finding well-specified space in a strong corridor at short notice, you are competing for the smallest part of the market. Browse CTP’s logistics and warehouse solutions for build-to-suit and ready-to-occupy options.

Five Questions to Answer Before Peak Season

1. Was ist Ihre tatsächliche Prognose für den Spitzenvolumenstand, nicht die von letztem Jahr plus ein Prozent?

Die Planungspunkte, die auf den Annahmen des Vorjahres basieren, sind die Ursache für Überlaufkosten.

1. Wo befindet sich Ihre Pufferzone physisch?

Die Kapazität zur Überbrückung von Bedarf aus anderen Ländern ist eine zusätzliche Kostenposition und keine Lösung.

1. Haben Sie die Kapazität für die von Ihnen geplante Auslastung?

Wenn Sie eine Automatisierung oder eine Temperaturregelung hinzufügen möchten, bestätigen Sie die Stromverbindung, bevor Sie weitere Schritte unternehmen.

1. Ist Ihr Notfallraum bereits angemietet oder steht lediglich eine Vereinbarung über die Nutzung vor?

In einem Markt, in dem die Zahl der Neubauprojekte auf ein neunjähriges Tief gesunken ist, ist ein mündlicher Vertrag im September in November nur sehr unwichtig.

1. Wie sieht das nächste Jahr aus?

If your peak requirement is becoming structural rather than seasonal, short-term overflow arrangements are an expensive way to solve a permanent problem.

Should You Secure Warehouse Capacity Early?

Der Markt befindet sich nicht in einer Krise. Die Nachfrage wächst moderat, die Leerstände in den CEE-Regionen bleiben überschaubar, und die Mietsteigerungen werden bis 2026 und 2027 voraussichtlich jährlich um etwa 2% liegen.

But the direction of travel is clear. Supply is constrained by rising construction costs, planning restrictions, and grid capacity limits, none of which can be resolved quickly. Nearshoring continues to anchor demand in Central and Eastern Europe as production networks diversify away from Asia. And occupier surveys suggest that 47% intend to increase their footprints, against just 4% planning to reduce them.

Securing space in August costs less and gives you more choice than securing it in November. That has always been true. It is simply more true in a market where the pipeline is thinning.

Brauchen Sie vor dem Spitzenverkehr Kapazität? Checken Sie die Verfügbarkeit across more than 270 locations in the CTPark Network, from the North Sea to the Black Sea.

Author – CTP Research Team
Last updated  – 16 October 2026