EU medicine shortages: what the EMA list shows in 2026

What the EMA shortage list is, and what it is not

The European Medicines Agency publishes a public list of shortages of centrally authorised medicines and of other shortages that affect more than one member state. It is the EU-level list. National regulators keep their own, longer lists for products supplied only in their market; in Ireland that is the Health Products Regulatory Authority's shortage list. This report analyses the EMA list as published in its machine-readable form, taken on 30 September 2026. Our EU medicine shortages register shows the same data, refreshed every twelve hours.

A medicine on the EMA list is not necessarily unavailable everywhere in the EU. The entry records which pharmaceutical forms and strengths are affected, whether alternatives exist and, where the company has said, when supply is expected to recover. The list also keeps resolved entries, which makes it a history of EU-level shortages as well as a snapshot.

EU medicine shortages by status: resolved, ongoing and discontinued

Of the 85 medicines on the list, 53 carry the status shortage resolved, 27 are marked shortage ongoing and 5 are listed as medicine discontinued, meaning the company has withdrawn the product rather than restored supply. All 85 are human medicines.

The ratio matters for readers in Ireland. Roughly one in three medicines ever placed on the EU list is still short, and the discontinued group shows that some shortages end with the product leaving the market rather than returning to it. The five discontinued medicines are Biltricide, the praziquantel treatment for parasitic worm infections, Mimpara for overactive parathyroid, Integrilin for acute coronary syndromes, Natpar for hypoparathyroidism, and the Insuman Basal and Comb 25 insulins.

The list is growing: when shortages were first listed

The EMA records the date each entry was first published. Counting by that date shows a step change from 2021. Between 2013 and 2020 the agency published between one and four EU-level shortages a year. In 2021 it published 8, in 2022 5, in 2023 16, in 2024 12, in 2025 16, and 11 in the first nine months of 2026.

The ongoing shortages are recent ones. Of the 27, 10 were first listed in 2026, 8 in 2025, 5 in 2024, 3 in 2023 and 1 in 2021. In other words, most shortages listed before 2024 have been resolved or the medicine withdrawn, and the current burden is made up of shortages that began in the last two years. Part of the rise reflects the EMA's expanded monitoring role since 2022 and the critical medicines work that followed, so the trend is one of better reporting as well as more disruption.

Which therapeutic areas are hit

Grouping the entries by the first therapeutic area the EMA records, diabetes mellitus leads with 8 medicines, which reflects the sustained demand for GLP-1 and insulin products across Europe. Cancer follows with 5 entries and leukaemia adds 3 more. Schizophrenia treatments and bacterial infections, which includes antibiotics, account for 4 each. Epilepsy and primary immunodeficiency diseases have 2 entries each. Ten entries carry no therapeutic area in the EMA data.

The ongoing list shows the pattern plainly. Five of the 27 ongoing entries are insulins or insulin pump cartridges: Eli Lilly insulins in various forms, Sanofi's insulin lispro, the Fiasp and NovoRapid PumpCart cartridges, and the Insuman human insulins. Victoza, the GLP-1 medicine liraglutide, is also ongoing. Four entries are antipsychotics: paliperidone palmitate, risperidone, quetiapine and Zypadhera. Four are older cancer chemotherapies, cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, fludarabine and vindesine, whose low prices make them vulnerable when a manufacturer exits. Two entries cover human normal immunoglobulins, and the rest range from the antibiotic Azactam and the anti-tuberculosis medicine Mycobutin to the pancreatic enzyme Creon and a group of ADHD medicines.

Pharmaceutical form matters too. Injectables dominate the list: solutions for injection, powders with solvent for injection, pre-filled syringes and pens together account for the largest share of affected forms, with tablets a distant second. Sterile injectable manufacturing has fewer suppliers and less spare capacity than tablet manufacturing, which is why a single plant problem can produce an EU-wide shortage.

Are alternatives available?

For 58 of the 85 medicines the EMA records that an alternative is available. For 6 it records no alternative, for 4 the answer is unknown, and for 14 the field is empty. One entry notes that alternatives exist only in some member states and another that it depends on the indication. The 6 medicines with no alternative are the cases where a shortage translates most directly into a treatment gap for patients and prescribers, and they are the entries a hospital pharmacist should check first.

The longest-running shortages

Expected resolution dates are sparse: 62 of the 85 entries give none. Among the ongoing shortages that do, Eskazole and Zentel, the albendazole anti-parasite medicines, are not expected to recover until 2028, and Brevibloc, the esmolol injection used in cardiac care, is expected to remain short until the end of 2027. Several entries say supply is expected to continue to be constrained without giving a date. Paliperidone palmitate, Azactam and Tegsedi are among the ongoing entries with no stated resolution.

The list is actively maintained. Twenty-seven entries were last updated in 2026 and 17 in 2025, so most of the ongoing shortages carry information that is less than a year old.

How the EU list compares with the US

The US Food and Drug Administration keeps its own drug shortage list, which we hold in our US drug shortages register. On the same day, 30 September 2026, it listed 239 products, of which 70 were current shortages and 169 resolved. The two lists are built on different rules and cover different products: the FDA list is national and includes many generic injectables that in Europe would appear only on member-state lists. The counts are therefore not directly comparable, but the share of current to resolved is similar on both sides of the Atlantic, at roughly three in ten.

What this means for Ireland

Every centrally authorised medicine on the EMA list is licensed for the Irish market, so each ongoing entry is a potential supply issue for Irish pharmacies and hospitals. The insulin and antipsychotic entries are the ones with the widest patient impact in Ireland, where both are dispensed in large volumes under the community drug schemes. Ireland also maintains its own national list through the HPRA, which captures nationally licensed products and Irish-specific supply problems that never reach the EU list, and the two should be read together. Our EU register links each entry to the EMA record so pharmacists and clinicians can check the affected strengths and forms before switching a patient.

Method and sources

We downloaded the EMA shortages JSON report on 30 September 2026 at 11:39 UTC and counted entries by the supply shortage status, availability of alternatives, expected resolution, first published date and last updated date fields as published. Therapeutic area uses the first MeSH term in the EMA record. Pharmaceutical form uses the first form listed for each entry. The EMA data does not reliably populate the start of shortage date, so this report uses the first published date instead and does not analyse shortage duration. FDA figures come from the FDA Drug Shortages database on the same date, counted by status.

Reuse and citation: this analysis is published by Priya Life Science under CC BY 4.0. Source records are from the European Medicines Agency, reused under the EMA legal notice, and from the U.S. FDA, which are US government public data. Cite the report using the box below; see our methodology page and corrections log.