If you work in cannabis or you’re simply cannabis-curious, Mary Jane Berlin sits on the calendar like a bright pin. It’s not just the crowd size, although the event regularly draws tens of thousands across three packed days. It’s the mix: Europe’s most pragmatic industry meet-up in a city that understands subculture. You get seed breeders trading phenohunt war stories in the same hall as compliance software vendors, CBD founders comparing extraction yields, and clinicians debating dosage ranges while a DJ tests the sound system in the beach area outside. That contrast signals what the expo has become: a working marketplace, a policy barometer, and an unusually honest look at where Europe’s cannabis ecosystem is actually heading.
You can get lost if you wander in without a plan. You can also miss the point if you expect a festival. It’s both, but the business layer is real. This guide is the playbook I wish someone handed me before my first year: how to navigate the halls, what conversations matter, where the hidden value lives, and how to avoid the rookie mistakes that drain your energy by Sunday.
The shape of the event, not just the size
Mary Jane Berlin usually runs across a long weekend in early summer, hosted at Arena Berlin with indoor halls tied to an outdoor riverside space. Expect somewhere in the range of 300 to 400 exhibitors, from international seed houses to German pharmacies and device manufacturers. Sessions run in parallel: industry panels, medical talks, and policy updates. Outside, food trucks, live music, and product demos take the edge off the back-to-back hallway conversations. It’s busy, but not chaotic if you pace it.
Two things define the rhythm. First, the morning is for working meetings. People are fresher, the aisles are navigable, and vendors take you seriously. Second, late afternoons bleed into social time. That’s helpful for rapport, not for details. If you need to negotiate price or ask for lab methods, do it before 15:00. After that, you’re networking.
A practical note on timing: Saturdays tend to be the heaviest footfall day, especially with consumer visitors. Friday offers the best signal-to-noise for B2B outcomes. Sunday can be surprisingly productive if you’re closing loops with people you already met, but schedules slip as flights loom.
Who shows up and what they’re actually buying
There are always three overlapping audiences:
- Industry operators and investors. They want distribution partners, new product categories, or operational tools that reduce cost. They ask about margins, volumes, and lead times, not just features. Medical professionals, pharmacists, and patient advocates. They look for evidence, reliability, and patient fit. They will not be swayed by flash. Expect questions about titration ranges, adverse event reporting, and real-world adherence. Consumers and culture. They drive energy and provide immediate feedback. They’ll tell you if a device feels flimsy or if a brand story rings false. For some products, this is free user research.
If you’re exhibiting, you’re selling one of three things: product, access, or proof. Product is obvious: vape hardware, flowers, extracts, edibles where legal. Access is distribution, shelf space, or a compliant route into the German market. Proof is certification, GMP compliance, validated lab results, or clinician endorsements that allow the cautious buyer to say yes. Know which category you’re in and tailor your conversations accordingly. The exhibitors that do best have a one-page leave-behind that speaks to each audience with different metrics. The same oil that a consumer likes for flavor must be explained to a pharmacist in terms of composition consistency, stability, and dose precision.
The policy backdrop in plain language
Germany’s cannabis policy is shifting, and Mary Jane reflects where it stands at that moment rather than a vague future. Depending on the timing, you may hear about:
- Adult use decriminalization and regional pilots. Read that as controlled experimentation with strict guardrails, not open retail. It influences venture appetite and product development pipelines. Medical cannabis prescriptions and reimbursement. This is where many operators find real revenue. The constraint is not patient demand, it’s documentation, prescriber comfort, and pharmacy logistics. CBD and novel food rules. EU-level guidance continues to shape what is feasible for ingestibles. Exhibitors will talk about cannabinoid content, THC thresholds, and marketing claims. When in doubt, ask vendors to show their most recent compliance opinion, dated and signed.
The practical takeaway: your go-to-market strategy must bifurcate. What works in a pilot adult-use context is not what passes in a medical channel. Train your staff to speak in either register and to switch gracefully. I’ve seen promising meetings stall because a sales rep presented terpene notes to a pharmacist who only wanted to understand batch-to-batch variance.
The floor plan tells a story
Plan for three loops through the expo, each with a different purpose.
Loop one, reconnaissance. Walk the perimeter, scan signage, and note which booths draw crowds for the right reasons. A packed booth might be giving away hats. That’s noise. The real signal is where people linger for conversations, and where you hear specifics: MOQs, testing methodologies, device failure rates. Mark those.
Loop two, deep dives. Choose five to eight targets. Arrive with two questions that separate marketing claims from operational truth. For extraction equipment, I ask for throughput at practical uptime, not theoretical max. For pre-roll automation, I ask about jam rates at different humidity levels and what changeover time looks like between strains. For distributors, I want to see anonymized sell-through, not just doors opened.
Loop three, opportunistic meetings. This is where serendipity helps. Follow the interesting side conversations. If someone mentions a regulator’s new stance or a lab method update, pause and listen. These are the details that give you a six-month edge.
If you’re new, set hard constraints. Give yourself 90 minutes per loop and stick to it. Without a plan, you’ll end up carrying six tote bags of samples you don’t need and missing the one panel that would have saved you a month.
What the medical track looks like when it’s useful
The medical sessions at Mary Jane Berlin can range from high-level overviews to practitioner-level detail. The ones worth your time do three things: present dosing frameworks, acknowledge uncertainty, and connect protocols to patient outcomes. Look for speakers who treat dosage as a range with titration guidance rather than a fixed number, and who admit where the evidence is thin. Red flags include slides with heavy brand placement in a supposedly neutral talk, or claims that ignore variability in patient metabolism.
If you prescribe or advise, take notes on titration strategies and real-world monitoring. I’ve watched pharmacists sketch a practical plan on a receipt backside: start low, set check-ins at day three and day ten, adjust based on sleep quality and daytime function, not just pain scores. That kind of pragmatic pathway is what many patients actually follow.
Also, the hallway exchanges after these sessions are gold. A five-minute conversation with a prescriber who manages older patients can reset your product messaging if you sell formulations. They’ll tell you that the dropper design is unusable for arthritic hands or that the bottle label is unreadable in low light. Those are fixable details that change outcomes.
Taste the consumer energy, but separate signal from spectacle
There is a festival outside. Enjoy it, but remember your goals. Product demos are fun, yet the value is what people say after a minute of use, not the initial excitement. If you sell devices, ask users to do a second cycle without guidance and watch where they hesitate. That hesitation cost you support tickets later. If you sell edibles in markets where they are permitted, note the questions people ask before buying: flavor expectations, onset time, how to avoid overconsumption. Those are your line items for packaging clarity.
I’ve hosted sensory feedback sessions at similar events. The pattern repeats: consumers care more about predictability than novelty once they have to spend their own money. They want a reliable Tuesday-night experience, not a Saturday-only rocket ride. Position your product accordingly.
What to bring, what to leave at home
You can operate with a small, deliberately chosen kit. Don’t overpack. Bring business cards, even in 2026, because batteries die and QR codes fail. Carry a single-page overview for each of your core offerings with real numbers: price bands, lead times, minimum orders, and any compliance credentials. For medical or lab products, include a short note on standards met and who audited them. If you have certifications, print the logos, but be prepared to show the actual certificates on a phone or tablet.
Wear shoes that can handle 12,000 steps a day on concrete. A lightweight backpack beats a shoulder bag by Sunday afternoon. For samples, check regulations in advance. Security at European expos can be strict about what can enter and leave the venue. Vendors know the drill, but visitors sometimes assume a North American trade show atmosphere. When in doubt, ask the organizer or your exhibitor contact what’s permissible.
Meetings that lead to contracts, not just conversations
A lot of people leave Mary Jane with warm feelings and no follow-up. That is a solvable problem. Book meetings into a calendar with 30-minute holds, include booth numbers or a landmark like “by the river entrance,” and confirm the day before. At the table, clarify next steps and assign names. If you agree to send a price sheet, say by when and then hit the deadline. It sounds obvious, but most competitors won’t.
For buyers, ask vendors for three references and call at least one before you leave Berlin. You have everyone in one place. It is shockingly efficient to walk 40 meters and ask another exhibitor if a supplier delivered on time and honored returns. People are more candid in person than by email.
If you’re a vendor, qualify aggressively. You’ll meet folks who are aspirational. That’s fine, but match your time to their readiness. A one-person project without capital is a long nurture, not a Q3 target. It’s fair to say, I like the vision, it sounds like you’re validating demand this year. If you hit X by September, let’s talk about a pilot run in Q4. You’ve given a path without promising resources you can’t afford.
The regulatory and compliance conversations you should be having
Compliance is not a checkbox in Germany, it’s a system. If you sell into the medical channel, you’ll hear acronyms like GMP, GDP, and ISO 17025. Translate them quickly: GMP covers manufacturing conditions, GDP covers distribution practices, and ISO 17025 speaks to the competence of testing labs. When someone claims any of these, ask who certified them, when, and whether the scope covers the specific products you care about. Certificates have scopes that exclude meaningful activities. Read them.
On labeling and advertising, German rules elevate clarity and caution. Don’t tempt fate with therapeutic claims https://anotepad.com/notes/23a33nsb unless you have the basis and the approvals. Many brands succeed by emphasizing reliable composition and patient support rather than grand promises. If you’re coming from markets where marketing is louder, tune your messaging down by a third. It will read as more credible.
A practical wrinkle: import and distribution paperwork often hits bottlenecks at the interface between a foreign manufacturer and a German wholesaler. That’s where the most avoidable delays live. Clarify who is responsible for translations, pharmacovigilance reporting, and batch release documentation before you sign. If you don’t, you risk sitting on pallets that cannot move.
Pricing norms and how to sense-check them
Event pricing has its own gravity. Discounts are common, but not always real. For hardware, bundles and MOQs can make numbers look better than they are. If a device vendor offers 15 percent off at the show, ask whether the discount is tied to a minimum order and whether they will honor that price for a replenishment order within 60 days. True partners will often say yes. Opportunists will dodge.
For medical products, margins depend on channel. In Germany’s pharmacy context, expect tighter ranges than in wellness retail. Distributors bake in logistics and regulatory overhead, so a seemingly small margin is often appropriate. Press vendors for transparency on what their fee covers: storage, cold chain if applicable, batch release, returns, and salesforce engagement. I’ve seen operators fixate on squeezing two percent while ignoring a distributor who answers the phone on Sundays. The latter is worth more.
A realistic day-in-the-life scenario
Imagine you’re a mid-size CBD brand from Spain, exploring entry into Germany. You’ve got GMP-compliant manufacturing for cosmetics, a few SKUs that sell well online, and early clinical data on a topical. Your budget allows one salesperson and a modest marketing push. What should you do at Mary Jane?
Day one, you start with the compliance street: three booths with regulatory advisors and two with testing labs. You ask each to walk you through the current German stance on cosmetics with CBD and how THC traces are handled. One advisor gives a neat summary and then mentions an upcoming clarification from a state authority. You note the timing. At the lab booths, you ask for their LOQ and LOD for THC and whether they run accredited methods for your matrices. You take photos of their accreditation certificates.
Next, you meet two distributors. Distributor A wants exclusivity across Germany in exchange for a base order that looks big. Distributor B proposes a pilot in Berlin and Hamburg, with shared risk on a pharmacy detailer. Distributor A is tempting, but when you ask about returns and shelf-life, they waffle. Distributor B shows you a simple dashboard for sell-through and outlines a quarterly review cadence. You schedule a follow-up with B and park A for now.
In the afternoon, you walk the consumer zone and watch reactions to topicals. You observe that people ask for use cases and penetration time. Your packaging says “relief,” which is vague. You make a note: shift to language like “for post-training soreness” or “for desk-shoulder tension,” which is descriptive without straying into medical claims.
Day two, you attend a medical session on topical cannabinoid use. A dermatologist discusses barrier function and recommends plain-language instructions. They mention that patients overuse volume and underuse frequency. You realize your label’s dosing guidance is backwards. That change, in practice, may reduce refunds and increase satisfaction.
By the end, you have three clear actions: align your label with German expectations, pilot with the distributor who shares data, and contract the lab whose methods hold up under scrutiny. You didn’t try to do everything. You picked leverage points that derisk entry in the next two quarters.
Where people get burned
It’s not the product demos. It’s the follow-through. The most common failure modes:
- Overcommitting inventory to an untested partner. You leave with a handshake and a purchase intent that never clears compliance. Six weeks later, cash is locked in stock. Ignoring support burden. You sell devices with a great event script, then your inbox fills with basic how-to questions. That cost was predictable. Scripts and one-page guides, translated well, would have cut tickets by a third. Misreading the consumer signal. What delights a festival crowd doesn’t always convert under fluorescent lights in a pharmacy. A sample encounter is not a sales funnel, it’s a first impression. Treating policy chatter as gospel. Rumors fly, especially about future liberalization. Anchor to what is signed into law or officially announced. Build optionality for the rest.
Each of these is avoidable with small habits: write the agreement terms, design onboarding for customers and partners, and validate claims with documentation. Not glamorous, but it’s what separates the vendors who return next year with bigger booths from the ones who disappear.
How to work the panels without wasting an hour
Panels are only as good as their moderators. Good ones keep speakers on track and push for specificity. Scan the program and choose formats where you can learn something actionable: “Scaling medical distribution in Germany, case studies” beats “The future of cannabis.” Sit near an aisle. If it drifts into platitudes, give it five minutes, then leave politely. No one will mind.
When you do stay, take note of names and job titles and then find those people after. A short, anchor-specific question works better than “Great panel.” Try, you mentioned a 12-week payback on your pharmacy training program. What did you measure, and would you share the template? You’ll either get a no, which is fine, or you’ll get a PDF that speeds you up by months.
Building a small but productive schedule
I aim for five planned meetings per day, plus room for three ad hoc. Any more and quality drops. Slot a 45-minute break to reset, hydrate, and walk outside. Sunlight matters. If you’re exhibiting, rotate staff so someone is always fresh. You can tell the difference between a booth team that planned breaks and one that didn’t by Saturday afternoon. The latter is reactive and brittle. The former can handle a surprise VIP visit.
Capture notes in the simplest possible system. I use a phone camera plus a shorthand in a notes app: contact, ask, give, by-when. Example: “M. Fischer, distro north, needs stability data, send by Wed.” That alone keeps 70 percent of deals from evaporating.
What “good” looks like when you leave Berlin
A successful Mary Jane Berlin doesn’t mean a suitcase of swag and a vague sense of momentum. It looks like a small set of specific outcomes:
- Two to four high-quality relationships where both sides agreed on next steps and timelines, captured in writing. Clear understanding of your regulatory path in Germany, including any documents you still need and who will produce them. Market feedback that changed at least one element of your product, packaging, or pricing in a measurable way. A short list of panels or talks that shifted your perspective, with a decision to implement or ignore their lessons and why.
If you can write those down the Monday after and tie them to calendar entries, you did well.
Final practical notes that don’t fit elsewhere
Berlin is efficient on public transport. Plan your hotel near a U-Bahn or S-Bahn line that serves the venue. Taxis get scarce at close. Cashless is widely accepted, but a few small vendors prefer cash for quick purchases. If you host a dinner, book early and keep it to six or fewer people. Larger tables get noisy and impersonal. The best conversations at Mary Jane happen when the bill arrives and someone admits the thing they can’t solve. That’s where partnerships start.
If you’re traveling with product prototypes, pack duplicates. I’ve watched a carefully tuned device die in hour one because a tiny clip snapped. The day was saved because there was a second unit. Also, charge cables everywhere. Two per device, not one. You will lend one out. Bring it back to your booth by setting a reminder with the borrower’s name.
Finally, expect to be surprised. A small Czech extraction startup might show a continuous process that halves your solvent use. A German pharmacist might teach you more in three minutes about patient adherence than a stack of reports. A seed breeder might introduce a cultivar that opens a new formulation path. The expo rewards those who stay curious and ask specific questions.
If you arrive with focus, push for operational truth, and schedule like a pro, Mary Jane Berlin can compress six months of learning and dealmaking into a long weekend. That’s the promise, and in my experience, it holds up.