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 Repubblica Ceca e Romania 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.

La maggior parte delle reti elettriche europee è al massimo della capacità o è al di là di essa. Mentre i centri di distribuzione diventano sempre più automatizzati e più elettrificati, le loro esigenze energetiche superano le capacità disponibili. Assicurare una capacità sufficiente della rete per un magazzino moderno e automatizzato è ormai considerata fondamentale e, in alcuni mercati, è questa la limitazione che determina se un sito sia fattibile o meno.

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 Dove la Pharma sta investendo nei paesi dell’Europa centro-orientale.

Cosa chiedono realmente gli occupanti

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.

Ciò ha un motivo oltre alla preferenza. La maggior parte dell’attività del mercato attuale riflette l’aumento delle operazioni di acquisizione da parte delle aziende, anziché un’espansione, che le spinge a trasferirsi da edifici più vecchi e meno efficienti verso immobili che sono effettivamente adatti alle operazioni automatizzate e ad alta intensità energetica. Non si prevede un pieno recupero dell’assorbimento netto prima del 2027, proprio perché una parte delle nuove locazioni è compensata dalla cessione di spazio in altre parti della città.

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. Qual è la previsione reale del volume massimo di vendita, non l’anno scorso più un dato percentuale?

I costi di sovraccarico si verificano quando la pianificazione massima si basa sulle ipotesi del precedente anno.

1. Dove si trova fisicamente il buffer?

La capacità di sovrapproduzione, a due paesi di distanza dal tuo fabbisogno, è un aspetto da considerare, non una soluzione.

1. Avete la capacità di elaborazione necessaria per gestire ciò che state eseguendo?

Se aggiungerete l’automazione o il controllo della temperatura, confermate la connessione elettrica prima di confermare qualsiasi altra cosa.

1. Il vostro spazio di emergenza è stato contrattualizzato o è solo stato discusso?

In un mercato in cui i nuovi insediamenti raggiungono un livello da nove anni in basso, un accordo verbale nel mese di settembre vale ben poco nel mese di novembre.

1. Come sarà il prossimo anno?

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?

Il mercato non è in crisi. L’occupazione sta crescendo moderatamente, la disponibilità di spazi vuoti nella regione CEE rimane ragionevole e le previsioni di crescita dei prezzi degli affitti sono di un ritmo gestibile, pari a circa 2 punti percentuali all’anno tra il 2026 e il 2027.

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.

Serve una capacità aggiuntiva prima dell'orario di punta? Verifica la disponibilità 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