Key findings
- 1,287 current licences appear on the Ministry of Justice register updated 9 July 2026: 514 for psychoactive (THC) cultivation, 663 for non-psychoactive cultivation and 110 for seeds.
- That is 140 fewer than the 1,427 listed on 31 January 2026, a fall of almost 10% in six months.
- 67 holders of a psychoactive cultivation licence on the January list were absent from the July list.
- New licensing has almost stopped. Open data records 928 licence resolutions in 2020 but only 20 in 2025.
- Of 914 psychoactive licence records in the open dataset, 372 (41%) are expired or cancelled.
- Activity is concentrated in the Andes: Antioquia and Cundinamarca hold 43.1% of all current licences.
Why this matters
Colombia legalised medical cannabis cultivation under Law 1787 of 2016 and modernised the framework with Decree 811 of 2021. The licensing system was designed for scale, and it got it: thousands of applications, and one of the largest registers of cannabis licences in the world.
But a licence is permission, not a business. The register now tells a different story: a market consolidating sharply, with far fewer new entrants and a steady stream of exits. For anyone looking to partner with, invest in or buy from a Colombian producer, the first question is no longer “are they licensed?” but “are they still operating, and can they prove it?”
The register at a glance
| Licence type | 31 Jan 2026 | 9 Jul 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychoactive cannabis cultivation | 577 | 514 | −63 |
| Non-psychoactive cannabis cultivation | 729 | 663 | −66 |
| Seeds for sowing and grain | 121 | 110 | −11 |
| Total | 1,427 | 1,287 | −140 |
The register covers licences issued by the Ministry of Justice’s Subdirectorate for Control and Oversight of Chemical Substances and Narcotics. Licences for manufacturing cannabis derivatives are issued separately by the Ministry of Health, and are not included here.
A boom, then a stop
The open dataset of licence resolutions shows how quickly the market filled up, and how quickly it stopped.
Issuance peaked in 2020 and 2021, as investors raced to secure licences, then fell by more than 95%. Reporting in late 2023 described an industry in crisis, with around 600 companies, nearly half of those founded since the medical cannabis law, having closed.
Where the licences are
We assigned each current licence to the department of its first authorised site. Twenty-eight departments have at least one licence, but most activity sits in the Andean belt, where altitude, light and access to Bogotá and Medellín airports line up.
| Department | All | Psychoactive | Non-psychoactive | Seeds | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antioquia | 308 | 133 | 149 | 26 | 23.9% |
| Cundinamarca | 247 | 99 | 123 | 25 | 19.2% |
| Valle del Cauca | 101 | 40 | 53 | 8 | 7.8% |
| Boyacá | 84 | 35 | 41 | 8 | 6.5% |
| Santander | 79 | 24 | 48 | 7 | 6.1% |
| Tolima | 69 | 30 | 33 | 6 | 5.4% |
| Meta | 62 | 24 | 35 | 3 | 4.8% |
| Magdalena | 46 | 21 | 19 | 6 | 3.6% |
| Cauca | 43 | 18 | 18 | 7 | 3.3% |
| Atlántico | 31 | 11 | 18 | 2 | 2.4% |
| Bogotá, D.C. | 28 | 11 | 13 | 4 | 2.2% |
| Caldas | 28 | 11 | 17 | 0 | 2.2% |
| Huila | 27 | 10 | 14 | 3 | 2.1% |
| Risaralda | 24 | 8 | 14 | 2 | 1.9% |
| Other 14 departments | 110 licences in total | ||||
What a licence does not tell you
The register confirms that a licence is current. It says nothing about whether the holder:
- has an allocated quota to cultivate psychoactive cannabis this season;
- is actually cultivating, with staff, a site and records;
- works to GACP, or has a route to EU-GMP processing;
- has ever exported, and to whom;
- is financially stable.
Those questions need company-level due diligence: registry checks, certificates verified with the issuing body, site visits and references. Our guide to GACP and EU-GMP for Colombian cannabis covers what to ask for.
Method
- We downloaded the Ministry of Justice’s published lists of current licence holders (data to 31 January 2026, and the list updated 9 July 2026) and extracted every licence row.
- Changes between dates compare licence rows, and the 67-holder figure compares tax identification numbers (NIT) of psychoactive licence holders.
- Issuance and status figures come from the Ministry’s open dataset on datos.gov.co, which records licence resolutions, so one company may appear more than once.
- Departments are assigned by the first authorised location listed for each licence. Holders authorised at several sites are counted once.
This report covers licences, not the companies behind them. We don’t publish company-level assessments. Figures are as published by the Ministry and may contain errors or reporting lags. Last reviewed 6 November 2026.
Sources
- Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, Lista de licenciatarios vigentes (data to 31 Jan 2026; updated 9 Jul 2026).
- datos.gov.co, Listado general del estado de las licencias de Cannabis Psicoactivo, No Psicoactivo y Semillas en Colombia (6hcf-xdqm), retrieved 6 Nov 2026.
- Law 1787 of 2016; Decree 811 of 2021.
- Reuters, “Colombia’s cannabis industry in crisis over regulatory, political hurdles”, 21 Dec 2023.