The Maze: Kaufland is taking its online marketplace to Spain and the Netherlands in late summer 2026. The move gives Schwarz Group a nine-country seller network and a sharper European answer to Amazon, Temu and AliExpress. This is not just another retailer adding a marketplace tab. Kaufland is trying to turn local trust, seller services and European compliance into cross-border marketplace infrastructure.
The expansion adds two awkward markets for incumbents. Spanish and Dutch consumers will be able to buy millions of third-party products across more than 6,400 categories through Kaufland's online store. Sellers ship the orders directly. Kaufland handles customer service and payment processing. That is the classic marketplace bargain: sellers get reach without building the storefront, while Kaufland keeps the customer relationship.
The positioning is unusually explicit. Kaufland is framing the move as a European alternative to Amazon, Temu and AliExpress. CEO Gerald Schoenbucher points to consumer demand for platforms that follow European standards on data protection, product safety and consumer rights. Translation: the fight is not only price and assortment. It is also trust, liability and regulatory comfort.
Schwarz Group is using retail scale as marketplace scaffolding. Kaufland operates more than 1,600 physical stores in eight European countries. Its online marketplace will now operate in nine countries. That matters because the company can present sellers with a broader European route to market while borrowing credibility from a familiar retail brand. For sellers wary of depending too heavily on Amazon, that optionality has value.
The German base is already large enough to make the pitch credible. In Germany, Kaufland says its platform attracts up to 32 million online visitors per month and offers more than 45 million products. The international proof points are smaller, but moving quickly: RetailDetail cites revenue growth of 439% for Kaufland.at and 322% for Kaufland.pl last year.
The company update adds the seller-side signal. Kaufland Global Marketplace says sellers and brands will be able to sell in nine countries from late summer 2026. It also says Austria, France and Italy already attract up to one million visitors each per month, despite being markets where Kaufland has no physical stores. Across all marketplace countries, GMV rose 11.9% year over year in FY2025, while international business revenue grew 124%.
Why it matters: Europe's marketplace problem has been fragmentation. Sellers can reach shoppers through Amazon, local champions, specialist platforms, direct-to-consumer sites, or fast cross-border challengers. Each option has tradeoffs. Kaufland is betting that a single European-origin network can reduce that fragmentation without asking sellers to abandon marketplace economics.
The Netherlands is especially interesting because it is not an empty field. Bol is entrenched. Amazon has been expanding. Temu and AliExpress compete on price and assortment. Kaufland's angle is different: not cheapest, not most global, but European, regulated and familiar. That may sound soft until the first product-safety investigation, data dispute or returns mess lands on a seller's desk.
The hard part is liquidity. Marketplace networks need buyers, sellers, assortment, service quality and delivery performance to compound at the same time. Kaufland can open onboarding. It can process payments. It can handle customer support. But sellers still need demand, and consumers still need a reason to add another marketplace to their shopping habits.
Still, the strategic logic is clear. Schwarz Group is turning Kaufland from a store-led retailer into a European commerce platform. Spain and the Netherlands give that ambition more geography, more seller density and more competitive relevance. Amazon and Temu will not lose sleep over one launch. But European sellers now have one more serious door to knock on.
Sources: RetailDetail reported the Spain and Netherlands launch, category count, marketplace model and scale figures. Kaufland Global Marketplace company text supplied in the job request provided seller onboarding, FY2025 GMV, international revenue and nine-country marketplace context via Kaufland Global Marketplace.
