Colliers: Romania reaches 5 million sqm of retail space, room to grow in smaller cities

Romania Insider · 21.10.2026, 12:35:00

Real estate consultancy Colliers took stock of Romania’s development in terms of retail space in an in-depth analysis marking 30 years of activity in the country, highlighting that room to grow still exists in small and medium-sized cities. “In 1996, when Colliers entered the Romanian market, modern retail was only just emerging. That same year, Metro opened the country’s first cash-and-carry store, at a time when most shopping still took place in markets, department stores and traditional retail formats,” Colliers said in a press release. Bucharest Mall (1999) and the first Carrefour hypermarket (2001) followed, and within just a few years, modern retail began expanding rapidly from Bucharest into Romania’s major cities, supported by rising incomes, broader access to credit and the country’s approaching accession to the European Union. “In the early 2000s, Romania’s modern retail stock was estimated at only around 100,000 square meters, compared with more than 5 million square meters today. The difference illustrates just how much both the real estate market and the way Romanians shop and consume have changed within a single generation,” the report mentioned. Romania’s accession to the European Union gave the market a major boost, as real incomes were rising, access to credit was expanding, and international retailers viewed Romania as one of the markets with the strongest growth potential in the region. The market did not, however, grow at a constant pace. The boom ahead of the global financial crisis brought some of Romania’s largest retail developments, with around 400,000 - 500,000 square meters of new retail space delivered each year in 2007-2008. The crisis brought that pace of development to an abrupt halt, with many projects postponed, frozen or abandoned. AFI Cotroceni, covering approximately 76,000 square meters, opened in 2009, at the height of the recession, and later became one of the strongest-performing shopping centers in the market. The 2009-2013 p