Rewe has received approval from Germany's federal cartel office to acquire 38 Tegut supermarkets across the country, according to MDR.de. The decision also covers one Tegut location in Thuringia, in the southern part of Erfurt.
The retailer had applied to take over 40 Tegut branches in total. The Bundeskartellamt turned down two sites in Hesse, citing competition concerns, MDR.de reports.
Rewe has not said which of the acquired stores will continue under its own banner and which will be converted into Penny discount outlets. The company says details are still being worked out.
Why it matters
The ruling is one piece of a much larger breakup of Tegut, the supermarket chain owned by Switzerland's Migros group. Migros announced in March that it would withdraw from the German market and sell Tegut, and the Tegut brand is to be discontinued.
The sell-off is being handled in separate deals, each requiring cartel office review. Edeka received permission in late September to take over 177 Tegut stores nationwide, a far bigger share of the chain than Rewe's. The competition authority has been examining Edeka's planned purchase since March and Rewe's since April.
The reviews reflect long-running concerns about how concentrated grocery retail has become in Germany. According to the cartel office, Edeka, Rewe, the Schwarz Group — which owns Lidl and Kaufland — and Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd together accounted for more than 90 percent of nationwide sales in 2025. The authority said, however, that it could not establish that these leading retailers jointly dominate the market across individual regions.
What Edeka was allowed to buy in Thuringia
Edeka's approved package covers 24 Tegut branches in Thuringia, MDR.de reports. Five of them are in Erfurt, four in Meiningen and three in Weimar.
The cleared Thuringian locations include stores in Eisenach at Barfüßerstraße 1 and Nordplatz 20; in Erfurt at Gorkistraße 11a, Greifswalder Straße 23-27 and Häßlerstraße 6-8a; in Gotha at Leinastraße 78; in Herbsleben at Anger 55; in Jena at Carl-Zeiß-Straße 4; in Meiningen at Fritz-Aßmus-Straße 16 and Landsberger Straße 2-6; in Schleusingen at Plettenberger Weg 17; and in Weimar at Damaschkestraße 1, Rainer-Maria-Rilke-Straße 41 and Wolfgang-Borchert-Bogen 1.
Edeka has already said that Netto, its discount subsidiary, will run some of the stores it is taking over.
The stores Edeka was not allowed to take
The cartel office prohibited 24 of Edeka's proposed acquisitions, and the ban runs for four years. Five of the rejected sites are in Thuringia: Bad Langensalza, Erfurt-Marbach, Geisa, Heiligenstadt and Benshausen, a district of Zella-Mehlis.
The authority's reasoning was that Edeka's share of the market in certain areas would have grown too large, which could have hampered effective competition. For that reason, the takeovers at those locations were refused in the form proposed.
The blocked Thuringian addresses are Bad Langensalza at Marktstraße 25; Erfurt-Marbach at Bergener Straße 18; Geisa at Gartenweg 3; Heiligenstadt at Brüsseler Straße 1; and Zella-Mehlis OT Benshausen at Benshäuser Straße 12.
Ten more stores go to Tante Enso
A further ten Thuringian Tegut markets are to be transferred to Tante Enso, MDR.de reports. The cartel office gave the green light for nine of them.
The tenth, a store in Ranis in eastern Thuringia, is not owned by Tegut. It belongs to an owners' cooperative that had a supply agreement with Tegut. According to the cooperative, it chose Tante Enso for financial reasons.
Andreas Gliesing, who chairs the cooperative's supervisory board, said more than 600 people have now subscribed for Tante Enso shares. Tante Enso had made that a condition of the arrangement.
The nine approved locations are Amt Wachsenburg OT Ichtershausen at Wachsenburgstraße 99; Bleicherode OT Wipperdorf at Straße der Einheit 105; Dachwig at Bahnhofstraße 9; Föritztal OT Neuhaus-Schierschnitz at Hofwiese 6; Frankenblick OT Mengersgereuth-Hämmern; Schleusegrund OT Schönbrunn at Eisfelder Straße 11; Steinbach-Hallenberg OT Viernau at Mühlstraße 52; Sondershausen at Beethovenstraße 9; and Unterbreizbach at Bahnhofstraße 27. The Ranis site is at Blumenstraße 41.
Fifteen Thuringian sites still unresolved
The fate of many other Tegut stores remains undecided. Fifteen of them are in Thuringia, including locations in Nordhausen, Saalfeld and Zella-Mehlis.
Migros, the Swiss parent company, has so far only pointed to an ongoing bidding process.
The unresolved Thuringian addresses are Bad Salzungen at Bahnhofstraße 11; Bad Langensalza at Marktstraße 25; Bad Liebenstein at Bahnhofstraße 3; Erfurt-Marbach at Bergener Straße 18; Geisa at Gartenweg 3; Grabfeld OT Juechsen at Meininger Straße 1a; Heiligenstadt at Brüsseler Straße 1; Ilmenau OT Langewiesen at Margarethenstraße 9; Kahla at Ölwiesenweg 5; Mühlhausen at Langensalzaer Landstraße 25; Nordhausen at Straße der Opfer des Faschismus; Saalfeld at Reinhardtstraße 56; Schleusegrund at Gabeler Straße 1a; Themar at Meininger Straße 6; and Zella-Mehlis OT Benshausen at Benshäuser Straße 12.
Some of these addresses overlap with locations named in the Edeka decisions, reflecting how the individual transactions have been split and reviewed separately.
What to watch
Attention now turns to the remaining bidding process for the stores Migros has not yet placed, and to how Rewe decides which of its 38 approved sites become Rewe supermarkets and which become Penny discounters.
