The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s top public health organization, has released new cancer statistics. They show that a lot of people now live with cancer every day. The numbers come out just a few days before World Cancer Day and show how much cancer is affecting an older population.
At some point, almost half of all people will get cancer.
The RKI’s most recent study shows that cancer is no longer a rare stroke of bad luck. A lot of Germans can realistically expect to have to deal with it.
The RKI says that 49% of men and 43% of women in Germany will get cancer at some point in their lives.
This “lifetime risk” means that almost every other man and woman will hear the word “cancer” from a doctor, no matter how old or young they are. The numbers only include cancerous tumours that have been officially reported to cancer registries. They do not include benign growths.
Striking numbers before they retire
The picture is already scary long before people retire. The RKI says that in Germany, about one in six women and one in seven men get a cancer diagnosis before they turn 65.
A lot of people go through this during important work years when they are raising families or paying off their mortgages. That early onset is a shock to me personally, but it also affects the job market, the pension system, and the cost of long-term healthcare.
Cancer in middle age is becoming more of a problem for society and the economy than just for doctors.
More than half a million new cases will happen in 2023.
Cancer happens a lot in a person’s life, and it happens in huge numbers every year. It is thought that 517,800 people in Germany were diagnosed with a tumour for the first time in 2023.
The breakdown by sex shows patterns that are already known:
Men: around 276,400 new cases; women: around 241,400 new cases.
These numbers include all kinds of cancer, from prostate cancers that grow slowly to lung tumours that are very aggressive. The burden on hospitals, oncology clinics, and rehabilitation services keeps getting bigger, especially since patients often need follow-up care for years.
The four most common types of cancer in Germany
There are more than 100 types of cancer, but four of them were responsible for about half of all new diagnoses in 2023.
Type of cancer 79,600 people in Germany are expected to get prostate cancer in 2023.
- 75,900 people have breast cancer.
- There are 58,300 people with lung cancer.
- Colorectal cancer affects 55,300 people (in the colon and rectum).
- Patterns by gender: breast and prostate cancer are the most common.
The most common type of cancer in men is prostate cancer. Blood tests for PSA or urological exams find a lot of cases. Some tumours grow slowly and don’t show any signs, while others spread quickly if they aren’t treated.
Breast cancer is still the most common diagnosis for women. Germany has set up mammography screening programs for some age groups that find a lot of tumours earlier, when they are easier to treat. But there are so many cases that almost everyone knows someone who has been hurt.
When it comes to lung and bowel cancers, how you live your life is important.
Lung cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer for both men and women. The biggest risk factor is still smoking, but air pollution, work-related exposures, and past smoking habits also have an effect on the numbers.
Another major cause is colorectal cancer, which affects the rectum and large intestine. Things like diet, being overweight, not exercising, and drinking alcohol can all be bad for your health. In Germany, people can get stool tests and colonoscopies starting in their middle age. These tests can get rid of polyps that might turn into cancer before they do.
Four types of tumors—prostate, breast, lung, and colorectal—make up about half of all new cancer cases in Germany.
In one year, cancer killed more than 220,000 people.
Cancer doesn’t always mean death. The number of people who survive has gone up, but the disease still kills a lot of people. In Germany, about 229,000 people died from cancer in 2023, according to the official cause-of-death statistics.
Men made up about 123,000 of these deaths, and women made up 106,000. Lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and aggressive types of bowel and breast cancer are still the most common causes of death from cancer. Part of the reason is that they are often diagnosed late or don’t respond to treatment.
The numbers come from the report “Krebs in Deutschland” (“Cancer in Germany”), which was put together by the German national cancer registry and the Centre for Cancer Registry Data at the RKI and came out at the end of 2026. Hospitals and doctors all over the country send a lot of information to these registries. They keep track of new cases, deaths, stages, and how people are being treated.
World Cancer Day: Using data to your advantage
The new RKI study came out just before World Cancer Day on February 23. This is a day when health groups all over the world try to raise awareness about cancer.
World Cancer Day’s goal is to get people to learn more about cancer and encourage them to take steps to avoid it, find it early, and get better access to treatment.
The RKI and its partners in Germany use the day to show off the newest data, talk about how therapies are getting better, and point out areas where care is lacking. Campaigns stress doing things like quitting smoking, going to screening programs, staying at a healthy weight, and being aware of possible warning signs early on.
“Almost one in two” people getting cancer may sound scary, but it’s not that hard to understand: people are living longer. Age is the biggest risk factor for many kinds of tumours, and the population of Germany is getting older very quickly.
Tests that work better also help. Imaging technologies, screening tests, and more sensitive lab methods can now find cancers that would have gone unnoticed in the past. That makes the number of cases go up, even though some of those tumours grow slowly.
Things like smoking, drinking, sitting at a desk all day, and air pollution also make the risk higher, though. The RKI and other experts often say that lowering known risk factors could stop or delay a lot of cancer cases.
What these numbers mean for people
People in Berlin, Hamburg, or Munich might not understand these numbers. But they do show that cancer will touch almost every family at some point, either directly or through parents, siblings, or close friends.
When experts talk about lowering risk, they usually mean four simple habits that work together:
not smoking or getting help to quit, staying active and at a healthy weight, limiting alcohol and highly processed foods, and getting screening tests like colonoscopies or mammograms when you can.
These steps may not work for sure, but they do make it more likely that they will. In a country that sees hundreds of thousands of new diagnoses every year, even small cuts in risk can stop or delay many cases.
The RKI uses these important words
A lot of technical language is used in reports, which can make it hard for people to talk about cancer in public. The RKI’s papers often use these three words:
- Incidence is how many new cases of cancer happen in a year.
- Mortality: how many people die from cancer in a given year.
- Prevalence: the number of people who have been diagnosed with cancer now or in the past.
More people in Germany are living with cancer for a long time because surgery, radiation therapy, and drug treatments have all improved. That means that there is a growing need for rehabilitation services, long-term follow-up, and psycho-oncological support.
What could happen next in Germany
If people don’t change how they eat, smoke, and exercise, statisticians say that the number of cancer cases in Germany will keep going up for the next 20 years. The numbers would go up if there were only older people.
If smoking keeps going down, obesity stays the same, and more people get screened, the rise in some kinds of tumours might stop or even go down. For instance, lung cancer rates might go down in younger groups, and finding colorectal and breast cancer early could move a lot of diagnoses to earlier, more treatable stages.
The RKI’s message for World Cancer Day is clear: almost half of the people in Germany have cancer. But smart public policy and changes in behaviour can help find cases earlier, treat them better, and even stop some of them from happening in the first place.
