New York Sold $1.41 Billion of Cannabis Through September. The State's $2.6 Billion Forecast Isn't Happening.

New York's licensed dispensaries sold $1.41 billion of cannabis in the first nine months of 2026. That's already most of the way to last year's full-year total of $1.68 billion, and the third quarter was the biggest in the program's history at $512.6 million.

It is also well short of the pace the state's own regulator was talking about in March, when then-Acting Executive Director John Kagia forecast $2.6 billion for the year. At the current run rate, New York lands closer to $2 billion.

Year by year

The program opened its first store on December 29, 2022. Here's what it has sold since.

Cumulative adult-use sales passed $2.5 billion at the end of November 2025, $3 billion in early March 2026 and $4.1 billion by the end of September.

The quarter-by-quarter story

Every quarter of 2026 has been bigger than the last. Q1 was $421 million, Q2 $479.9 million, Q3 $512.6 million. The third quarter beat the previous record of $503.7 million, set in Q4 2025.

The comparison with a year earlier is where the slowdown shows.

Year-over-year growth went from about 24% in the first quarter to 15% in the third. A year earlier, the same comparison ran 235%, 131%, 62% and 46% across the four quarters of 2025. That's two straight years of steady deceleration, which is what happens when a market goes from a few dozen stores to more than 700. Through September, 2026 is up about 20% on the same nine months of 2025, $1.41 billion against $1.18 billion.

One caution on those percentages. OCM switched its sales figures from retailers' self-reported numbers to Metrc, the state's tracking system, starting in 2026. OCM puts both on the same chart, but they aren't collected the same way, so treat the year-over-year growth as close, not exact. The drop from $503.7 million in Q4 2025 to $421 million in Q1 2026 isn't a like-for-like comparison either: Q4 is the holiday quarter, and Q1 was the first on the new system.

Month to month, though, the market has gone flat. June was $162.2 million, July $173.7 million, August $171.1 million, September $167.8 million. Average daily sales peaked in July at $5.60 million and were $5.59 million in September. Growth is still coming, but it's coming from more stores, not from each store selling more.

Prices are falling, faster than in other states. OCM's average price per unit fell from $30.07 in January to $27.64 in September, down 8.1%. Higher unit sales added 7.3% to sales per store. "Customers are buying more," OCM Deputy Director Kevin Brennan told the board.

The forecast and the run rate

Back in March, OCM said retailers had done nearly $250 million year to date through the first three weeks of February, and forecast $2.6 billion for 2026. Kagia went further, saying annual sales could reach $4.6 billion by 2028 if growth continued.

Q3's $512.6 million annualizes to about $2.05 billion. To hit $2.6 billion, the fourth quarter would need to do $1.19 billion, more than double any quarter so far. That isn't going to happen. If the fourth quarter grows at the third quarter's pace, 15% over Q4 2025, it comes in near $580 million and the year finishes near $2.0 billion. The realistic finish is $1.9 to $2.0 billion, which is still a record and still roughly 12 to 19% growth on 2025. It just isn't 50%.

Headset's numbers tell the same story from the other side: $1.86 billion in New York sales over the 12 months to September, up 22.1%, the second-fastest growth of any state it tracks after Ohio.

Stores: 1,039 licensed, 712 open

New York has licensed 1,039 adult-use retailers, counting microbusinesses with retail permission. Only 712 are open, per OCM's presentation, and 735 recorded sales in September. About half the state, by land area, has opted out of retail.

That works out to 5.4 licensed retailers per 100,000 residents. Oregon has 18.4, Colorado 14.8, Michigan 8.6, Massachusetts 6.9. New York is above California at 4.6 and Illinois at 2.3. Brennan told the board the state is "approaching more saturated markets."

The per-store numbers are where the strain shows. Annualized adult-use sales per store were about $2.7 million in September, down 3.4% from June, even though 50 more dispensaries came online in between. Long Island is the clearest case: open stores there grew 50%, from 12 to 18, and average annual sales per store fell from $14.9 million to $11.4 million.

Who owns the store matters too. The Registered Organizations, the medical companies that got dual-use licenses, average more than $5 million a year per store. Social and economic equity stores average about $2.2 million. OCM says 56% of all adult-use licenses have gone to SEE applicants.

The medical program

Medical cannabis is a rounding error in New York now. In September, medical sales were about $4.8 million against $163 million adult-use, under 3% of the total. Twenty-seven medical dispensaries recorded sales, the same number as in June, and annualized sales per medical store fell from $2.2 million to $2.1 million.

The medical program isn't dead so much as absorbed. The companies that built it, the ROs, post the highest average sales per store of any license type, as dual-use locations. The patients who kept their cards mostly shop at the same counters. What's left of "medical" as a separate channel is the tax exemption and a few dozen stores.

New Jersey, for comparison

New Jersey did $1.164 billion in 2025 and is running flat in 2026 at about $857 million through September, by Headset's count. New York passed it last year and won't look back. New Jersey still has the cheaper product, about $7 to $8 a gram against New York's $10 and up, and a lower effective tax, which is why Jersey stores along the border still pull New York customers. Every new store New York opens cuts into that.

What to watch

Q4 is the holiday quarter and usually the biggest. OCM presents full-year numbers in January or February. The question for 2027 isn't whether New York grows; it's whether the stores still in the pipeline can find customers that the 735 already open haven't.