German firms see drop in industrial orders at start of 2026

German industrial companies received significantly fewer orders in January compared to the previous month, according to official data released on Monday.

Seasonally and calendar-adjusted order intake fell by 11.1% compared to December, the Federal Statistical Office said.

Analysts were surprised by the scale of the decline in orders. On average, experts had expected a decline of only 4.3%.

Order intake in December was also weaker than previously estimated. The statistics office revised the increase to only 6.4%month-on-month, after previously reporting an increase of 7.8%.

Year-on-year, order intake rose by 3.7% in January.

Once again, large orders had a large effect on the figures. Excluding these, order intake in January was only 0.4% lower than in the previous month.

"Following the very high volume of large-scale orders in December 2025, new orders were back to normal in several branches of manufacturing in January 2026," the Wiesbaden-based agency said.

Production in the manufacturing sector also proved unexpectedly weak in January, seeing a 0.5% month-on-month decline despite analysts' forecast of 1% growth.

Year-on-year, production in industrial companies fell by 1.2%, which was also a larger fall than expected.