How much wind power Germany added in 2026
How much wind power Germany added in 2026 is clearest in its own turbine register. Onshore wind, turbines built on land rather than out at sea, crossed 70 gigawatts, a gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts, each megawatt a unit of electricity generating capacity, of installed capacity for the first time on 30 June 2026, reaching 70,018 megawatts across 29,216 turbines, according to Deutsche WindGuard, the engineering firm that builds its reports from the Federal Network Agency own register of every generating unit in the country. Operators finished installing 423 new turbines in the first 6 months of the year, adding 2,365 megawatts of gross onshore capacity, a gain of about 6% from a year earlier.
The same 6 months also saw operators retire 307 older turbines, removing 437 megawatts of onshore capacity, the most retired in any half year the report has on record. About 29% of the gross capacity added, 689 megawatts, came from repowering, replacing an old turbine with a newer, larger one on the same site instead of building on new land. Once the retired capacity is subtracted, net new onshore capacity grew by 1,928 megawatts in the first half of 2026, up about 3% from a year earlier.
About 29% of the added capacity came from repowering, replacing an old turbine with a newer, larger one on the same site.
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| Added | 2,365 |
| Retired | 437 |
| Net added | 1,928 |
Where the new capacity was built
Germany has 16 states, and the new capacity was not spread evenly among them. North Rhine Westphalia added the most, 541 megawatts, followed by Lower Saxony at 516 megawatts, with the next 3 states each below 400 megawatts.
Top 5 of 13 reporting states.
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| North Rhine Westphalia | 541 |
| Lower Saxony | 516 |
| Schleswig Holstein | 361 |
| Mecklenburg Vorpommern | 208 |
| Baden Wurttemberg | 169 |
A target this report calls not realistic
A law in Germany sets a target of 84 gigawatts of cumulative onshore wind capacity by the end of 2026. At the halfway point the country had reached 70.0 gigawatts, leaving about 14 gigawatts still needed in the final 6 months. Deutsche WindGuard, reading its own register against that legal target, states directly that closing the remaining gap is not realistic.
About 17 gigawatts of already approved onshore capacity is still waiting for an auction slot, the process through which the government sets how much new turbine capacity gets a guaranteed price each year. The 2 auction rounds held in February and May 2026 together awarded 5.9 gigawatts at an average price of 5.34 cents a kilowatt hour, under the legal price cap of 7.25 cents a kilowatt hour.
The last bar is a half year total, every earlier bar is a full calendar year.
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| 2022 | 4.3 |
| 2023 | 7.7 |
| 2024 | 14.2 |
| 2025 | 20.6 |
| First half 2026 only | 8.9 |
An industry record and a workforce that expects it to slow
A trade union survey of works council representatives, the elected employee representatives inside German companies, was published the same week. Among representatives at wind turbine and component manufacturers, 25% expect new orders to fall over the next 2 years, only 18% expect the workforce to grow, down from 32% in an earlier survey, and 54% rated the outlook for the domestic wind sector negatively. A record approvals report and a workforce worried about the next 2 years describe the same 6 months, not 2 different stories.
Germany led Europe, but the count is different
WindEurope, the industry trade group covering the whole continent, credits Germany with 3.4 gigawatts of new wind capacity in the first half of 2026, the most of any European country, ahead of the United Kingdom at 789 megawatts and Spain at 612 megawatts. That continent wide count includes offshore wind alongside onshore, part of an 8.8 gigawatt total added across Europe, so it measures a different thing than the onshore only figures above, and the 2 should not be read as the same number.