Kratom is a controlled euphoriant substance in Denmark and has been since 13 March 2009. The plant Mitragyna speciosa, its main alkaloid mitragynine, and the minor alkaloid 7-hydroxymitragynine are all named separately on list B of the Danish order on euphoriant substances. Substances on that list may lawfully be used in Denmark only for medical and scientific purposes.
Denmark acted early, and it acted on all three at once. Sweden, next door, did not add the plant itself to its schedules until March 2025, as our Sweden page sets out. Anyone reading that kratom was recently restricted in Denmark has the wrong country.
The instrument
The listing sits in a ministerial order rather than in an act of the Folketing. The current version is order number 405 of 26 March 2026 on euphoriant substances, published in Lovtidende A on 28 March 2026 and made under sections 1 and 2 of the Act on euphoriant substances, consolidated as legislative order 1334 of 9 December 2019. Section 33 brought it into force on 29 March 2026 and repealed the previous order, number 2446 of 12 December 2021.
Three entries in list B of that order are the ones that matter here. Number 231 is 7-hydroxymitragynin. Number 262 is Kratom (mitragyna speciosa). Number 334 is Mitragynin.
They arrived together. Order 174 of 10 March 2009 amended the order then in force and inserted all three at once, as new numbers 80 a, 86 a and 115 a of list B. That amendment took effect on 13 March 2009, and the entries have carried through every renumbering since.
What list B means
The Danish order sorts controlled substances into five lists, and the differences are real.
List A covers substances that may not be present in the country at all, except where the Danish Medicines Agency permits it in quite exceptional circumstances. Heroin, LSD and khat are on it.
List B, together with lists D and E, covers substances that may be used only for medical and scientific purposes. That is where kratom sits, alongside most of the cannabinoids, amphetamines and synthetic opioids. Section 3 of the order puts it plainly: euphoriant substances may be used in Denmark only for medical or scientific purposes, and import, export, sale, purchase, supply, receipt, cultivation, manufacture, processing and possession may take place only in accordance with the order.
Being on list B rather than list A does not make kratom lightly regulated. It means the substance has a conceivable medical or scientific use and can be handled under licence. For a person buying it to take, the practical position is the same as list A: there is no authorisation available to you, so every one of those acts is unlawful.
What happens if you are caught
Section 30 of the order refers breaches back to sections 3 and 3 a to 3 d of the Act on euphoriant substances, and to section 191 of the Criminal Code in the circumstances that provision sets out.
Section 3(1) of the Act is the ordinary penalty: a breach of the Act, or of the rules made under it, carries a fine or imprisonment for up to two years. In fixing the penalty, the court must weigh the harmful effects and the dangerousness of the substance concerned. The words “and the dangerousness” were added by Act 724 of 20 June 2025, in force on 1 July 2025.
The Act has changed in two other ways that a page written from the 2019 consolidation would miss. Act 667 of 11 June 2024, in force on 1 July 2024, repealed the old discretionary warning sentence in section 3(1) and replaced it with a new section 3(4). That provision is mandatory rather than permissive: a waiver of prosecution shall be granted for possession for personal use where social circumstances speak in favour of it and the possession stems from a strong dependence on hard euphoriant substances following prolonged and sustained misuse of those, and it applies to repeat cases too. The word “hard” is doing real work there. The explanatory material to that Act gives heroin, cocaine and amphetamine as examples and says cannabis-based substances are not within it. Kratom is not addressed either way, so we cannot tell you which side of the line it falls, only that the line exists and that the provision was not written with a substance like this in mind.
Act 724 of 20 June 2025 also inserted section 3 d, which lets a court disqualify someone who carries on retail from a shop, or works in one, from retail trade where they breach the Act by selling euphoriant substances.
Denmark does not have the separate administrative track that Italy and Portugal use for personal possession. Holding kratom for your own use is a criminal offence in Denmark, not an administrative one. What prosecutors and courts do with a small personal quantity in practice is a question about prosecution guidance rather than about the Act, and we have not examined that guidance for kratom specifically.
What this means in practice
There is no lawful retail market for kratom in Denmark, and no Danish shop can sell it.
Ordering it from abroad is importing a controlled euphoriant substance, and the fact that the seller acted lawfully in the Netherlands or Germany makes no difference to the position in Denmark.
Because the order lists the plant by name as well as both alkaloids, there is no product formulation that escapes it. Leaf, powder, extract and capsules are all caught, and so is anything sold as a mitragynine preparation.
How current this is
The lists are reissued by ministerial order as substances are added, and the numbering shifts every time. The entry numbers given above are those in the order of 26 March 2026, which is the version we read on the verification date at the top of this page. The underlying position, that kratom and its two named alkaloids sit on list B, has been stable since 2009, and we checked the 2021 order as an intermediate point.
The Act itself is the part most likely to be out of date in anything you read elsewhere. Note that the 2019 consolidation is not the current law: the 2024 and 2025 amending acts described above changed both the warning rule and the sentencing test, and any page still quoting section 3 as it read in 2019 is describing a provision that has been repealed.
If a later order has changed any of this and you can point us to it, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.