By Tom Adams

Curaleaf, Trulieve, Green Thumb Industries, Verano and Cresco Labs hold the top five slots for a third straight edition of the Global Cannabis 50. But three of the five booked less revenue in 2025 than they did in 2023, and Green Thumb is the only one that grew in both 2024 and 2025.

When the companies that define a market stop growing, any growth in the overall market has to be coming from somewhere else.

Source: BDSA forecast, April 2026

Curaleaf, still number one, slipped to $1.3 billion from a peak near $1.35 billion two years earlier; Verano fell to $822 million and Cresco to $656 million, each down double digits over the span. Green Thumb, the exception, now sits within about $6 million of Trulieve for second place. The American market these operators dominate has settled into a price war, and a price war is not where top-line growth lives. The sharpest climbs belong to companies few Americans have ever heard of. Cantourage, a Berlin-based medical-cannabis importer running an asset-light model, rose from a notional 50th on 2023 revenue to 22nd, more than quadrupling revenue over the two years to roughly $102 million. MTL Cannabis, a profitable Quebec grower built up through the Canada House roll-up, more than tripled revenue to climb 26 places to 28th. Of the ten fastest-growing names on the list, eight are based outside the United States.

The lone big American mover is the exception that proves the rule — and a sign of the times. Vireo Growth tripled revenue to $269 million and jumped to 8th, not on the strength of the U.S. market but by buying itself bigger though four all-stock acquisitions completed in 2025 — Deep Roots Harvest in Nevada, Proper Brands in Missouri, WholesomeCo in Utah and The Flowery in Florida. The other big gainers were outside the US: Canada’s High Tide grew to $426 million, and Cannara, Vext, Rubicon and Avant each climbed double-digit places. None of them got there on the strength of the U.S. market the giants depend on.

That growth overseas played out against the most brutal attrition among US companies the list has seen since we created the Global Cannabis 50 in 2022 for Global Cannabis Times — a ranking Tom Adams Research will now track going forward.

The most brutal turnover yet

Twenty of the 2024 Global Cannabis 50 are gone from the 2026 list — about twice the number that dropped off between the inaugural 2022 ranking and the 2024 edition. They left in two ways. Some were acquired and folded into larger operators — Acreage into Canopy; Nova, Indiva and Valens into SNDL. The rest failed, and were run through receivership (The Cannabist, Ayr Wellness, TILT, Schwazze, Gold Flora). Some of the latter group— Leafly, Blüm, Lowell Farms — are still listed but no longer reporting.

The common thread is debt that couldn’t be refinanced. Nearly all of the money U.S. growers and retailers raised over the past year — 99.7% — came as debt rather than equity, the peak of a half-decade climb that lifted debt’s share of worldwide cannabis financing to 82% in 2025 from 58% a year earlier (Viridian Capital Advisors). So when many operators stumbled it was creditors, not strategic buyers, who walked away with the assets — Vireo’s October move on 86% of Schwazze’s debt is the template. A list that once turned over on who was growing now turns over on who can refinance.

A wider lens

This edition widens the aperture of the Global Cannabis 50 by geography and by including hemp-derived cannabinoids and pharmaceuticals, all three sectors of the total cannabinoids market we defined last month (see “Investors are reading the wrong tape”). Each of the 50 draws more than half of its revenue from the cannabinoids market (hence no Jazz or Scotts).

Every figure is as-reported revenue, net of excise taxes, from primary filings for that year. Where a company divested or restated for another reason, the year is shown as reported and the change is treated as the news it is. The ranking metric has evolved over the three editions; this year it is based on each company’s fiscal year ending nearest December 31, 2025 (Aurora’s revenue, for instance, is from its fiscal year ended March 31, 2026).

Light shining at the tunnel’s end

The wider lens sheds more light on cannabinoid companies than ever before — and, after years of static rankings at the top, it looks like many likely changes are ahead. In Germany, the April 2024 law that legalized adult possession and cannabis clubs also pulled medical cannabis out of the narcotics statute and into ordinary pharmacies, and the market has since roughly tripled. — lifting Cantourage up this list.

On April 28, 2026, the United States moved medical marijuana to Schedule III — the first federal reclassification of cannabis in fifty years — with a DEA hearing on rescheduling adult-use cannabis set for June 29 to July 15. A November 2026 federal ban on hemp-derived cannabinoids, meanwhile, looms forbiddingly over many of these companies, while others stand to benefit if hemp-based competition is curtailed.

The reclassification of medical cannabis in the U.S. is a balance-sheet event, not directly a sales driver as it was in Germany: medical is barely a quarter of U.S. legal sales, per BDSA, in a country where most people already have access. What it does deliver is real but indirect: ending the punitive 280E tax treatment frees after-tax cash flow — the cheapest growth capital available in a market where 99.7% of financing now comes as debt.

Strategies diverge from here

The actual growth lever for legal cannabis has always been new markets legalizing, and domestically that is essentially just Texas, which is expanding from three medical licenses to fifteen, all able to operate statewide. Four of the top five long-time leaders of the Global Cannabis 50 won Lone Star licenses — Trulieve, Green Thumb, Verano and Cresco — but #1 Curaleaf did not.

With the long-time leader flat and shut out of the one state still issuing licenses, a growing Green Thumb could ride Texas past Curaleaf to number one on the next list. Trulieve will certainly drop from number two, having just spun off its adult-use operations from medical to uplist to the NYSE on June 10.

Curaleaf’s answer isn’t Texas; it’s abroad. Alone among the U.S. operators it has acquired and built a substantial international business — Curaleaf International, the largest vertically integrated platform in Europe, which booked $172.5 million in 2025, up 183% from 2023, and roughly 15% of company revenue in the fourth quarter while its U.S. base shrank.

That is the choice this list now frames for the traditional industry leaders in the U.S. and Canada: chase the last licenses at home or build where the growth already is, overseas. Per BDSA’s April forecast, Canadian sales grew just 4% and the U.S. just 10% from 2023 to 2025 — while international markets exploded 82%.

The 2026 Global Cannabis 50

#	Company	FY2023 (US$ M)	FY2025 (US$ M)	2-yr change (’23→’25)
1	Curaleaf	1,346.6	1,268.1	-6%
2	Trulieve	1,129.2	1,181.2	+5%
3	Green Thumb Industries	1,054.6	1,175.3	+11%
4	Verano	938.5	821.5	-12%
5	Cresco Labs	770.9	655.8	-15%
6	Ascend Wellness	518.6	500.6	-3%
7	High Tide	363.6	426.4	+17%
8	Vireo Growth	88.1	268.8	+205%
9	Innovative Industrial Props	309.5	266.0	-14%
10	Jushi	269.4	262.9	-2%
11	TerrAscend	317.3	260.6	-18%
12	Aurora Cannabis	199.0	230.8	+16%
13	Village Farms	285.6	215.9	-24%
14	Canopy Growth	306.9	195.4	-36%
15	Organigram	120.9	186.4	+54%
16	Glass House	160.8	182.0	+13%
17	Marimed	148.6	159.8	+8%
18	Cronos Group	87.2	146.6	+68%
19	iAnthus	159.2	144.0	-10%
20	Auxly	74.9	108.4	+45%
21	Planet 13	98.5	103.4	+5%
22	Cantourage Group	25.5	102.1	+300%
23	Fluent	97.3	86.7	-11%
24	Decibel	78.7	80.6	+2%
25	Vitura Health	78.7	80.4	+2%
26	InterCure	96.4	77.0	-20%
27	Cannara Biotech	42.3	76.4	+81%
28	MTL Cannabis	23.2	75.3	+225%
29	Chicago Atlantic	62.9	62.9	+0%
30	Vext Science	34.8	51.4	+48%
31	NewLake Capital Partners	47.3	51.1	+8%
32	Papa Medical	—	50.3	n/a
33	Charlotte’s Web	63.2	49.9	-21%
34	Red White & Bloom	65.4	46.4	-29%
35	Rubicon Organics	29.7	42.5	+43%
36	IM Cannabis	36.2	39.2	+8%
37	LFTD Partners	51.6	36.9	-28%
38	Leef Brands	30.6	34.8	+14%
39	Grown Rogue	23.4	32.4	+39%
40	MediPharm Labs	24.5	32.3	+32%
41	AFC Gamma	70.5	31.3	-56%
42	C21 Investments	28.9	30.1	+4%
43	Avant Brands	19.5	25.7	+32%
44	Little Green Pharma	13.3	24.1	+81%
45	cbdMD	24.2	19.2	-21%
46	Synbiotic SE	4.2	18.7	+348%
47	Avicanna	12.4	18.2	+46%
48	CV Sciences	16.0	13.8	-14%
49	Althea / Peak Processing	16.8	10.2	-40%
50	Cann Group	14.5	8.7	-40%

Revenue ranking by each company’s fiscal year ending nearest December 31, 2025, as publicly reported as of June 11, 2026 (e.g., Aurora’s year ending 3/31/26), net of excise and sales taxes. Revenue reported in native currencies converted to US dollars at that year’s average exchange rate. Source: Company filings; Tom Adams Research.