Kaufland’s online marketplace is likely to name at least one new country storefront, its tenth, before June 30, 2027, and to open it to shoppers before October 31, 2027. The base case is a Belgian storefront, possibly paired with a second market, announced in the April to June window and switched on between August and October, which is exactly the rhythm the Schwarz Group business has followed for three years running. Three signals from the last six weeks point the same way: a record Dutch launch followed four weeks later by Spain, a new pan-European rival that opened in 21 countries at once, and an EU customs regime that is steadily raising the cost of the direct-from-China model Kaufland positions itself against.
In short
- The prediction: Kaufland Global Marketplace likely announces a tenth national storefront by June 30, 2027 and takes it live for consumers by October 31, 2027 (roughly 70% confidence for the announcement, about 65% for both legs).
- Base case market: Belgium, because Kaufland already runs Dutch- and French-language catalogs, borders the country on three sides through its German, Dutch and French storefronts, and can reuse its seller base almost unchanged; Portugal and a Central European store market are the most likely alternatives.
- Signal 1: Kaufland.nl went live on September 8, 2026 with what the company called its most successful launch to date, and Kaufland.es followed on October 6, 2026 with more than 10 million items and over 3,100 sellers.
- Signal 2: On October 13, 2026 easyGroup launched easyShop across 21 European countries on a single seller account, raising the cost to Kaufland of a slow country-by-country rollout.
- Signal 3: The EU customs reform entered into force on September 21, 2026, with a parcel handling fee due from November 1 on top of the EUR 3 flat duty, and low-value parcel declarations have already fallen by roughly half at Europe’s two main gateways.
Why this matters now
Europe’s marketplace map is being redrawn faster than at any point since Amazon’s push into Sweden, Poland and Belgium in 2020-2022. Kaufland, the hypermarket chain owned by the Schwarz Group, which also owns Lidl, has gone from a single German marketplace to nine country storefronts in roughly three years. For sellers, that is now the largest network of national marketplaces in Europe that is not run by Amazon, and the company says so explicitly: board member Gerald Schönbucher described it as “a strong European answer to the global e-commerce giants” in the Dutch launch release.
The question for sellers, brands and rival platforms is no longer whether Kaufland expands, but where it goes next and how quickly. That matters for budget planning. A merchant deciding today whether to translate catalogs into a new language, register for packaging compliance in another country or open a returns address there wants to know which country storefront is coming in 2027, not 2029.
It also matters for incumbents. National champions such as bol in the Benelux, Allegro in Poland and Czechia (our guide to selling on Allegro across Central Europe covers its footprint), and eMAG in Romania have each built their moats around local language, local payments and local delivery promises. A well-funded German entrant with 15,000 sellers already plugged in changes the cost of defending those moats.
Finally, timing matters because the 2027 window is unusually open. Kaufland told Romanian business daily Ziarul Financiar in mid-September that “other countries will follow, although no concrete decisions have been taken yet.” That sentence is the clearest statement of intent the company has made, and it was made after the Dutch launch, not before. The signals below suggest the decision is likely to be made in the first half of 2027.
Signal 1: two launches four weeks apart, and a record opening day
The first and strongest signal is Kaufland’s own execution in September and October 2026. Kaufland.nl went live on September 8, 2026, according to the company’s press release from Neckarsulm. It opened with more than 9 million items across over 6,400 categories, with about 3,000 of the network’s 15,000 merchants already set up for the Dutch storefront. More than 1,200 Dutch merchants had already been selling cross-border through Kaufland’s other storefronts before the local site existed.
Four weeks later, on October 6, 2026, Kaufland.es opened with more than 10 million products and over 3,100 sellers, according to trade coverage from ChannelX and ESM Magazine. Schönbucher said at the Spanish launch that “our launch in the Netherlands a month ago was the most successful one to date,” and ESM reported that first-day Dutch orders were more than double the previous launch record. By the time Spain opened, the Dutch catalog had reportedly grown past 13.5 million products.
Why the cadence is the signal
Three years of data now describe a stable operating template. In each of 2024, 2025 and 2026 Kaufland announced two countries in the spring, opened seller onboarding a few months before launch, and switched on consumer storefronts between August and October. The table below sets out the pattern as reported in the trade press.
| Cohort | Markets | Announced | Consumer launch | Physical Kaufland stores in market? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Czechia, Slovakia | Not widely reported | 2023 (exact dates not confirmed) | Yes |
| 2024 | Poland, Austria | April 2024 | Poland August 7, 2024; Austria September 4, 2024 | Poland yes; Austria no |
| 2025 | France, Italy | April 2025 | France by mid-August 2025; Italy September 2, 2025 | No |
| 2026 | Netherlands, Spain | June 2026 | Netherlands September 8, 2026; Spain October 6, 2026 | No |
| 2027 (predicted) | Base case Belgium, plus possibly one more | Likely April to June 2027 | Likely August to October 2027 | Belgium no |
The pattern suggests a business that budgets one international cohort per fiscal year and launches it into the late-summer window, ahead of the autumn peak. Schwarz Group’s fiscal year runs from March to February, so an announcement in the spring lines up neatly with a new budget year.
The performance numbers behind the confidence
Cadence alone would not justify a prediction if the earlier launches had disappointed. They appear not to have. Per the Dutch launch release, gross merchandise value grew 11.9% in the last fiscal year while international business grew 124%. Kaufland.pl’s gross merchandise value rose 322% year over year, which Schönbucher used to argue that the company can establish itself against a strong local incumbent; in Poland that incumbent is Allegro.
The company also says Kaufland.fr and Kaufland.it each reached up to one million visitors a month within a few months of launch, and that Austrian brand awareness of the marketplace rose 16 percentage points in its first year. These are company-reported figures and should be read as such. But they describe an international business that is growing many times faster than the domestic German core, which is precisely the condition under which a management team keeps funding new country launches.
Signal 2: easyShop opens in 21 countries at once
The second signal comes from outside Kaufland. On October 13, 2026, easyGroup founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou launched easyShop, a multi-category marketplace that opened across 21 European countries simultaneously, as reported by RetailDetail and The Grocer. Sellers reach all 21 markets through one account, with VAT calculated automatically. The platform holds no inventory of its own and sells no private-label goods, a deliberate pitch to merchants wary of competing with the platform they sell on.
The platform is operated by OnCommerce, the company behind UK marketplace OnBuy, which is also preparing a further marketplace brand called Comet. Haji-Ioannou framed the launch in terms very close to Kaufland’s own: “No market benefits if everyone feels they can only shop in one place,” he said. Local sites are rolling out in phases, and hundreds of retailers were reported to be live at launch.
Why a rival’s breadth pressures Kaufland’s depth
easyShop and Kaufland are not yet comparable in scale. Kaufland counts 15,000 merchants and catalogs of 9-13 million items per storefront; easyShop launched with hundreds of retailers. But the two are now competing for the same scarce resource: the attention of mid-sized European merchants who want a non-Amazon second channel and have limited operations staff to manage it.
A merchant comparing the two offers in 2027 sees a simple trade-off. Kaufland offers proven demand in nine countries; easyShop offers nominal reach into 21 countries from one sign-up. Kaufland’s single monthly base fee already covers every storefront in its network, so each country Kaufland adds raises the value of that fee without raising its price. The likely competitive response to a 21-country headline is to keep adding countries where Kaufland can bring real demand, rather than to let the reach gap widen unanswered.
The broader European alternative race
easyShop is one of several signs that “European alternative to Amazon and Temu” has become a crowded positioning. Allegro has been running a phased entry into Ukraine, with domain integration expected in 2027. Our own coverage of eBay’s European fee architecture shows incumbents also repricing to defend share. In a crowded positioning, coverage becomes a differentiator, and Kaufland’s most obvious lever is to keep its geographic lead over younger rivals while its seller base is already in place.
Signal 3: the EU customs regime squeezes the direct-from-China lane
The third signal is regulatory. The EU’s customs reform entered into force on September 21, 2026, after Council approval on September 3 and a European Parliament vote on September 16, as detailed in our report on the parcel handling fee that lands November 1. The regulation makes platforms and distance sellers the deemed importer for e-commerce consignments, and an EU-wide handling fee on small parcels is due to apply from November 1, 2026, on top of the flat EUR 3 duty per tariff line that replaced the EUR 150 exemption on July 1.
The early data are striking. Belgian customs recorded 53% fewer low-value declarations in July 2026 than a year earlier, and Dutch customs reported a 46% drop in e-commerce declarations across July and August, per figures published by both agencies. Belgium and the Netherlands are the EU’s main entry gateways for Chinese parcels, so these numbers describe the whole bloc’s cheap-parcel lane, not local demand in those two countries.
Why this favors an EU-stocked marketplace
The customs data show that the goods are not disappearing; they are moving into EU warehouses and arriving as bulk freight. That reduces the price gap between direct-from-China listings and EU-stocked sellers, which is the gap Kaufland’s merchants have struggled against. It also raises the compliance burden on platforms that rely on overseas sellers shipping single parcels, while barely touching a marketplace whose sellers are overwhelmingly EU-based and ship domestically or within the single market.
For a company whose entire pitch is “from Europe, for Europe,” a regulatory regime that narrows the price gap is a reason to accelerate rather than wait. The handling fee is likely to be fully priced into consumer baskets by the first half of 2027, which is exactly when Kaufland would be finalizing its next cohort. The precedent is instructive: Kaufland’s 2024 and 2025 cohorts were planned while Temu and Shein were still scaling rapidly in Europe, whereas the 2027 cohort would be the first planned in a market where that model is under sustained regulatory pressure. Our analysis of why Shein’s European revenue likely falls again in H2 2026 sets out how quickly that pressure is showing up in the numbers.
What the pattern suggests
Taken together, the three signals point to continuation rather than a pause. The operating template is stable, the launches are reported to be getting more successful rather than less, a new rival is competing on breadth, and the regulatory environment is turning in favor of EU-stocked sellers. Signals point to a tenth storefront in the 2027 cohort, with an announcement likely between April and June 2027.
Why Belgium is the base case
The choice of market is less certain than the decision to expand, but one candidate stands out. Kaufland’s own seller requirements say product data and customer communication must be in each marketplace’s national language, and the company already offers free product data translation. Belgium’s two main shopping languages, Dutch and French, are both already covered by Kaufland.nl and Kaufland.fr, which means the catalog for a Belgian storefront would largely exist on day one.
Belgium also borders Germany, the Netherlands and France, Kaufland’s three most important seller origins after the 2026 cohort. A German or Dutch seller can typically deliver to Belgium on the same parcel networks and promises it already uses at home. And Kaufland already owns kaufland.be; it currently redirects to the company’s international landing page, as do the Portuguese, Irish, Danish, Swedish and Hungarian domains.
Candidate markets ranked
| Candidate | Catalog language already live? | Borders an existing storefront? | Kaufland stores in market? | Main incumbent | Our assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium | Yes (Dutch and French) | Yes (Germany, Netherlands, France) | No | bol, Amazon.com.be | Base case, roughly 45% to be in the 2027 cohort |
| Portugal | No | Yes (Spain) | No | Amazon via Spain, Worten | Plausible pair with Belgium, roughly 25% |
| Romania | No | No | Yes | eMAG | Possible, but Kaufland said in September it is not on the current list, roughly 20% |
| Croatia or Bulgaria | No | No | Yes | Local and regional players | Lower, roughly 10-15% each |
| Hungary or Slovenia | No | Yes (Austria, Slovakia) | No | eMAG, Allegro group | Lower, roughly 10% |
| Nordics or Ireland | No (Ireland: English) | No | No | Amazon, local players | Unlikely in 2027, under 10% |
These probabilities are not mutually exclusive, because the template suggests two markets per cohort. The most likely single outcome is Belgium plus one of Portugal or a Central European store market. The table is a judgment based on the published launch criteria, not a leak, and it should be read as a ranking rather than a forecast of exact odds.
Leading indicators to watch
Kaufland’s earlier cohorts left a visible trail before each consumer launch, and the same markers are likely to appear ahead of a 2027 cohort. Watching them should give observers several months of warning before any storefront opens.
- Seller onboarding pages: in 2026, seller onboarding for the Dutch and Spanish storefronts reportedly opened in June, roughly three months before the consumer launches. A new country option in the Kaufland seller portal would be the earliest hard signal.
- Integration partner roadmaps: multichannel software vendors published “Kaufland France and Italy” integration notes in spring 2025, months ahead of the launches. Similar notes naming a new country would be a strong tell.
- Domain behavior: kaufland.be and kaufland.pt currently redirect to the international landing page. A switch to a country holding page or a seller sign-up page would likely precede launch.
- Conference announcements: the 2026 cohort was announced at Kaufland’s own e-commerce seller conference in June. The 2027 edition is the most likely venue for the next announcement.
- Compliance services: Kaufland promoted its EPR service for packaging compliance alongside the Spanish launch. Extension of that service to a new country would indicate that legal groundwork is complete.
None of these indicators is conclusive alone. Two or more appearing in the first half of 2027 would raise our confidence in the main prediction well above the current 70%, while silence through May 2027 would shift weight toward the consolidation scenario.
What would count as a hit
For the prediction to score as correct, Kaufland must publicly name at least one new national storefront (a country-specific domain with a local-language catalog for consumers, not just a shipping destination from an existing site) by June 30, 2027, and that storefront must accept consumer orders by October 31, 2027. A Belgian launch scores the base case; any other tenth market scores the main prediction but not the market call. An announcement without a 2027 consumer launch scores as a partial hit.
Wider context: Europe’s marketplace map in 2027
Kaufland’s expansion sits inside a broader reshaping of European marketplaces. Amazon has been tightening the economics of its own Pan-European program, a topic covered in our analysis of why Amazon likely adds a third mandatory Pan-EU FBA store. When Amazon raises the cost of being a pan-European seller on its platform, the relative appeal of a single-fee multi-country alternative rises.
At the same time, Asian platforms are adapting to the customs changes by shifting stock into EU warehouses and recruiting local sellers. That narrows Kaufland’s price advantage on EU-stocked goods over time, which argues for moving into new markets while the window is open rather than after Temu and Shein have finished their local-warehouse buildouts.
The national champions
Each of Kaufland’s likely targets has a strong incumbent. In Belgium, bol has the language, delivery and loyalty advantages of a Benelux champion, and Amazon has run a Belgian storefront since 2022. In Romania, eMAG is the dominant player. In Portugal, demand is split between Spanish cross-border offers and local electronics and general merchandise retailers. Kaufland’s Polish experience, where it reports strong growth despite Allegro’s dominance, is the company’s own evidence that a strong local incumbent is not a deterrent.
Schwarz Group’s wider European push
The Schwarz Group has been positioning itself as a European infrastructure provider beyond retail, including in cloud services through its Schwarz Digits unit. The marketplace expansion fits that broader “European sovereignty” narrative, which tends to sustain investment through a cycle rather than being cut at the first sign of margin pressure. That narrative is a reason to expect continuity in the expansion budget, although it is not a guarantee of any single country launch.
Implications for sellers, brands, platforms and investors
For independent sellers already on Kaufland, a tenth storefront is likely to be close to free optionality. Kaufland’s standard monthly base fee is reported at EUR 39.95 and is charged once regardless of how many storefronts a seller uses, with category commissions of roughly 4-16%. A Belgian storefront would therefore add reach without adding fixed cost. Sellers who want to be ready should check now that they hold a GTIN for every listing, an EU returns address, and Dutch and French product data.
For brands
Brands that rely on selective distribution should expect more third-party listings of their products in new Kaufland markets on day one, because the catalog for a new storefront is largely inherited from existing ones. Brand teams that already monitor Kaufland.de and Kaufland.fr should extend that monitoring to any new storefront the week it launches, not after the first season.
For competing platforms
For incumbents such as bol, a Kaufland launch in Belgium would likely trigger seller-fee and visibility promotions to keep cross-listing merchants exclusive or at least prioritized. The pattern in Poland, where Kaufland’s growth came alongside Allegro’s continued dominance, suggests that incumbents rarely lose share outright in year one; what they lose is pricing power over sellers, who gain a credible second channel.
For investors and analysts
For investors following the European e-commerce sector, the key read-through is that the non-Amazon marketplace layer is consolidating around a small number of multi-country networks. Kaufland’s network, eBay’s European sites, Allegro’s CEE footprint and newer entrants such as easyShop are competing for the same mid-sized merchants. The timing of Kaufland’s next cohort is a useful indicator of whether the Schwarz Group sees its marketplace as a growth engine or a defensive asset; a tenth market in 2027 would point clearly to the former.
Caveats: what could go wrong
The most important counter-signal is Kaufland’s own language. The September statement that “no concrete decisions have been taken yet” is consistent with a pause year in which the company focuses on deepening its nine storefronts rather than adding a tenth. Kaufland has previously said it wants catalog depth in each country comparable to Kaufland.de, and Spain only opened in October 2026; digesting two launches in one autumn could plausibly absorb 2027’s budget.
A second risk is economics. Company-reported growth rates are high from a low base, and Kaufland does not publish country-level profitability. If the Dutch and Spanish storefronts require heavy customer acquisition spending against bol and Amazon, the Schwarz Group could reasonably decide that 2027 is a year for marketing in existing markets rather than new domains.
Alternative outcomes
| Scenario | What happens by October 31, 2027 | Rough probability |
|---|---|---|
| Base case | One or two new storefronts announced in spring 2027 and live by autumn, including Belgium | About 45% |
| Expansion without Belgium | A tenth storefront launches, but in Portugal, Romania or another market | About 20% |
| Consolidation year | No new country; investment goes into fulfilment, advertising or catalog depth in the existing nine | About 25% |
| Delayed cohort | New market announced in 2027 but consumer launch slips into 2028 | About 7% |
| Unscoreable | Structural change (partnership, acquisition or rebrand) makes “tenth storefront” ambiguous | About 3% |
Other things that would weaken the call
An acquisition route would complicate scoring: if Kaufland bought an existing marketplace in a new country rather than launching its own storefront, the network would grow, but the template would break. A broader Schwarz Group cost program or a weak 2026 holiday season in Germany could also delay the decision. Finally, Belgium specifically could be skipped if Kaufland judges that Dutch- and French-speaking Belgian shoppers are already well served by cross-border delivery from Kaufland.nl and Kaufland.fr.
FAQ
How many countries does the Kaufland marketplace operate in today?
Nine, as of October 2026: Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. The Netherlands went live on September 8, 2026 and Spain on October 6, 2026.
What exactly is being predicted?
That Kaufland publicly names at least one new national storefront by June 30, 2027 and opens it to consumer orders by October 31, 2027. The base case market is Belgium, but any tenth country scores the main prediction.
Why Belgium rather than a country where Kaufland already has stores?
Kaufland’s two most recent cohorts went to markets without physical stores, so stores are no longer the main criterion. Belgium can reuse the existing Dutch and French catalogs and borders three current storefronts, which likely makes it the cheapest and fastest market to open.
Has Kaufland said anything about Belgium?
No. Kaufland has not named any market beyond Spain and said in September 2026 that “other countries will follow, although no concrete decisions have been taken yet.” The Belgian call is an inference from the company’s launch criteria, not a company statement.
Is easyShop really a threat to Kaufland?
Not yet in scale, since it launched with hundreds of retailers against Kaufland’s 15,000. The pressure is on positioning: both compete for mid-sized European merchants seeking a non-Amazon channel, and a 21-country headline makes a slow rollout harder to defend.
Could Kaufland pause expansion in 2027 instead?
Yes, and this is the main risk; we put a consolidation year at about 25%. Spain is very new, and the company has said it wants catalog depth in each storefront. A pause would most likely show up as no spring announcement by June 2027.
What does a new storefront cost existing Kaufland sellers?
Likely nothing in fixed fees, because the reported EUR 39.95 monthly base fee is charged once across all storefronts. Sellers would still need local-language product data, an EU returns address and, in some countries, packaging compliance registrations.
How do EU customs changes affect Kaufland’s expansion?
The EUR 3 flat duty since July 2026 and the handling fee due from November 1, 2026 raise costs for direct-from-China parcels. That narrows the price gap with EU-stocked sellers, which is Kaufland’s core seller base, and likely strengthens the case for expanding in 2027.
When will we know if the prediction is right?
The first checkpoint is the spring 2027 announcement window, with April to June the most likely months based on the last three cohorts. The final checkpoint is October 31, 2027, by which any 2027 cohort storefront should be live if the template holds.