Kratom is a controlled psychotropic substance in Slovakia. It is named in the schedule annexed to Act 139/1998 on narcotic substances, psychotropic substances and preparations, in the first of the schedule’s groups, in the plainest possible terms:
Kratom (mitragyna speciosa)
It sits in príloha č. 1, group I, under the heading for psychotropic substances, immediately after klonazolam.
Kratom has been there since 16 December 2021, inserted by Act 479/2021, which commences on the day it was promulgated rather than after the usual interval. Slovakia does not appear on the EU Drugs Agency’s list of countries reported to control kratom. That list does not claim to be closed, saying “at least 12” countries, so read its silence as incomplete rather than as disagreement.
Why this listing gets missed
The Slovak Act dates from 1998 and its schedule has been amended twenty times since, across thirty-one consolidated versions. The 1998 text as originally enacted contains no kratom entry, because the entry is twenty-three years younger than the Act it sits in. Anyone reading a copy of the Act without checking which consolidation it is will find a schedule that is missing it.
An earlier draft of this page said kratom was not controlled in Slovakia. It was written from one of those copies. The mistake is worth setting out, because it is a trap this site had not previously hit and the usual defence does not catch it.
Our standing check before trusting an absence is to grep the document for a substance we know is controlled. Cocaine, heroin and cannabis were all present in the 1998 text, so the check passed. But those substances have been controlled since 1998. Their presence proves the schedule rendered; it proves nothing about whether the schedule is current.
The version we should have read, and now have, is the consolidated text in force from 1 January 2026. It contains klonazolam, mephedrone and twenty-five JWH synthetic cannabinoids, none of which existed in Slovak law in 1998. Those are the markers that tell you a schedule is current. Kratom is in it.
One caution about that check, learned the hard way. An earlier draft of this page reported the consolidated text as running to roughly half a million characters. That figure was the size of a scrape of the web page, navigation and all, not of the law. The legally binding text is the PDF that Slov-Lex serves alongside the page, and it is about a quarter of that. The page itself says the HTML version is informative only, so this page now cites the PDF.
What we can and cannot tell you
We can tell you kratom is on the schedule, and which group it is in.
We can also tell you what the Act permits to be done with a group I substance, because the list is short and closed. Under section 4(3), such substances may be cultivated, produced, imported, exported, dispensed, transited and distributed wholesale only for research, teaching and expert-assessment purposes, with an exception for industrial hemp that has nothing to do with kratom. Section 4(1) requires a ministry permit for handling them at all, and section 4(4) defines unlawful handling as handling them in any way other than the Act provides.
We have not read the Slovak penalties, so this page does not tell you what a court would impose.
Slovakia also keeps a separate list of risk substances under a different provision of the same Act. Kratom is not on it, and does not need to be, being on the main schedule already.
What this means in practice
There is no lawful retail market for kratom in Slovakia and no Slovak shop can sell it. Retail sale is not among the purposes section 4(3) permits, and section 4(4) sweeps up everything the Act does not provide for.
Ordering it from a Czech, Polish or other foreign webshop means importing a listed psychotropic substance. Section 19(1) allows import and export only by the holder of a permit, section 19(2) requires a further permit for each substance, and section 21(3) prohibits import in the form of a consignment addressed to anyone other than the person named on the import permit. There is no carve-out for parcels from another member state, so it makes no difference that the seller acted lawfully where the parcel was posted.
Because the entry names the plant itself rather than only an alkaloid, leaf and powder are caught directly.
How current this is
This page rests on the consolidated text of Act 139/1998 with its first annex, in force from 1 January 2026, read on the verification date at the top. We read the legally binding PDF rather than the informative web rendering, and checked the version history: the January 2026 consolidation is the current one, with no successor and no amending act registered since 2025.
We also opened the 1998 Act as originally enacted, and the 2021 amending act, so that the listing date on this page comes from the instrument that created the entry rather than from the date printed on the Act it now sits in. If you can point us to a later amendment that changes any of this, write to editorial@wikikratom.com and we will update the page and credit the correction.