Kratom is legal in the Czech Republic, but it is neither unregulated nor sold as a food. Since 2025 it has been a “psychomodulatory substance,” a legal category the country created for products like it. An adult may buy kratom in a specialised shop, within limits set by the state on how strong it is and how it is packaged. A minor may not buy it at all.
This is a different answer from the rest of Europe. Where France banned kratom and Sweden made it a narcotic, the Czech Republic chose to regulate it and keep it legal. That choice is the story of this page.
A third way, between a ban and a free market
The Czech government set out its reasoning plainly. A “grey zone” of psychoactive products had been sold for years with almost no control, often labelled as “collector’s items” so they could not be regulated as food. Banning a single substance had achieved little, because a replacement, usually less researched and sometimes more dangerous, appeared on the market almost at once. Many of these products could be sold to anyone, including children, in any way, including from vending machines or as sweets.
Rather than repeat that cycle, the government built a framework. An amending Act, number 321/2024, came into force on 1 January 2025 and created two new lists. One is for classified psychoactive substances, kept under tight control. The other is for psychomodulatory substances, which may be sold legally under strict conditions.
What a psychomodulatory substance is
The category has a specific meaning. If a substance is examined and found not to pose a serious health or social risk, the government may place it on the psychomodulatory list, where it can be sold to adult consumers under strict rules. The assessment is done by an expert group drawing on the Ministry of Health, the National Institute of Public Health and the Government Office, and the government decides which substances are listed.
So far the list is short. Kratom, meaning the plant mixture from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, and kratom extract are the only substances on it. They were placed there by government regulation 456/2025, which took effect on 12 November 2025.
The rules
The conditions are set out in the Act and in two implementing regulations.
On who may buy and where:
- Sale to anyone under 18 is prohibited.
- Kratom may be sold only in shops specialising in psychomodulatory substances, and people under 18 may not even enter them.
- It may not be sold from vending machines, or at events intended for people under 18.
- Online sale is allowed only where the buyer proves their identity, for example through a bank identity service, and the parcel is delivered into their own hands.
- Repeatedly serving or selling a psychomodulatory substance to a child is a criminal offence, as it is with alcohol.
- Sellers must display a notice stating that sale to people under 18 is prohibited.
On the product itself, the decree 448/2025, in force from 8 November 2025, sets concrete limits in its first annex. They differ for the plant and for the extract:
- Kratom (the leaf material). At most 50 grams per package. Mitragynine, the plant’s main active alkaloid, is capped at 1,250 milligrams per package and at 2.5 percent by weight. 7-hydroxymitragynine is capped at 50 milligrams per package and 0.1 percent by weight.
- Kratom extract. At most 10 grams or 10 millilitres per package. The same 1,250 milligram and 50 milligram caps per package apply, at concentrations of up to 12.5 percent mitragynine and 0.5 percent 7-hydroxymitragynine.
The permitted forms are defined, including powder, extract, tincture, paste and jelly, and each package must carry a consumer information notice. The decree also limits what the label may say about dosing: a recommended dose printed on the package may not contain more than the maximum single and daily amounts set in its fifth annex, which for oral use are 125 and 375 milligrams of mitragynine, and 5 and 15 milligrams of 7-hydroxymitragynine. Those figures are a ceiling on labelling, not guidance, and this page does not offer them as such.
Selling is not open to anyone. The amended Addictive Substances Act requires a permit, issued by the Ministry of Health, to handle psychomodulatory substances, including to import, distribute or sell them, and a seller applying to sell online must describe the age-verification system it will use.
The timeline matters
The regime arrived in stages, and a reader can land on any one of them and mistake it for the whole.
The framework Act took effect on 1 January 2025. The concrete rules that apply to kratom came later, in November 2025: the product limits on 8 November and the listing of kratom itself on 12 November. The fully detailed regime, with potency caps and packaging rules, is therefore something that has only been in force since late 2025.
What this means in practice
An adult in the Czech Republic may lawfully buy and use kratom, from a specialised shop, so long as the product stays within the state’s limits on quantity and potency.
Kratom is not sold as a food, and that is deliberate. The whole reason for the new category is that these products could not be authorised as foods, and selling kratom for human consumption as a food would run into the same European novel food rules that apply across the Union. The Czech Republic did not exempt kratom from food law. It placed it in a different box entirely.
A tightening is proposed, and is not law
On 14 September 2026 the Czech government approved a bill amending the Addictive Substances Act and eight related laws. According to the government’s own announcement, it would raise the minimum age to buy kratom from 18 to 21, end online sale, tighten the rules for specialised shops and for the composition and testing of products, add an excise duty with tax stamps starting at 2 koruna per gram or millilitre and rising with the concentration of active substances, and move kratom products from the reduced 12 percent VAT rate to the standard 21 percent.
This is a bill, not law. A government’s approval sends it to parliament, which may change or reject it. Everything on this page above this section describes the law in force as of the verification date. We have not tracked the bill’s progress through parliament beyond the government’s approval, and the rules above should not be read as settled for long.
How current this is
The list is set by the government and can change. A substance can be added, and in principle one could be moved to the stricter list or removed. On the verification date, the list regulation 456/2025 and the decree 448/2025 were both in their original wording, with no amendment recorded, and the Addictive Substances Act was in its version in force from 1 January 2026. For a regime this new, and with a tightening before parliament, the date at the top of this page is worth checking.