Canada’s Pre-Roll Market: What a CAD $1.4 Billion Category Teaches the Rest of the World
Every cannabis market is heading somewhere. Canada has already arrived.
While most of the world is still debating whether to open a legal shelf, Canada has spent seven years stocking one. The result is the clearest preview available of where a mature pre-roll market ends up: which formats win, how consumers buy, and what that does to a production line.
From runner-up to category leader
Pre-rolls did not take the top spot overnight. In 2024 the category generated more than CAD $1.27 billion across nearly 69 million units, a 32.8% share of the market, according to Headset data published in the Top 50 Canadian Pre-Roll Brands report. By mid-2025 it had overtaken dried flower in sales, marking a major shift in the broader Canadian legal cannabis market.[1]
The full 2025 numbers settled the question. Pre-rolls moved 77.2 million units and generated CAD $1.4 billion, a 33.9% market share, with revenue up 6.3% and units up 6.2% on the prior year. [2]
That growth came while the rest of the market was shrinking. In 2024, flower sales fell 9.3% and edibles fell 12.4%, yet pre-rolls still grew. [3] And the category’s weight in Canada is striking: pre-rolls held about 32% of the market that year, roughly double their 16% share in the United States. [4]
Pre-rolls hold roughly twice the market share in Canada that they do in the United States.
What Canadians actually buy
Two segments do most of the work. The single-strain hybrid is the top-selling segment by both revenue and units. [2] Infused pre-rolls, boosted with concentrate, sit at the premium end of the category and are its fastest-growing slice. [5] The distinction between infused and non-infused pre-rolls matters because it affects both the product’s composition and how it moves through production.
The pack matters as much as what’s inside it. In 2024, multi-packs accounted for about 85% of pre-roll sales, while the classic 1-gram single took just 11%. [4] Among single-serve formats, the best seller is the 1-gram single in a 109mm cone, at 13.9% of sales, followed by the 2-gram two-pack of 109mm cones at 12%. [2]
The only market with a standard cone
Canada’s physical product is standardized in a way no other market is. Four cone lengths do most of the work: 70mm, 84mm, 98mm and 109mm. These pre-roll sizes accommodate different fill weights and product formats. They come in refined white or natural brown paper, with the paper filter tip pre-fitted at the cone stage.
Premium lines build on that base with glass and ceramic tips, terp-sauce coatings, kief jackets and hash holes. Each of those additions is a separate process step, and often a separate SKU.
Ten provinces, ten product strategies
Even in the most standardized pre-roll market on earth, the country is the wrong unit of analysis. The province is the real one.
Consumer preference splits along provincial lines. Alberta and British Columbia lean infused, while Saskatchewan and Ontario skew toward hybrids. Retail structure differs completely too, with provincial differences in Canada’s cannabis laws shaping how products reach consumers:
- Ontario licenses thousands of private storefronts.
- Alberta runs on private retail with the loosest rules in the country.
- Quebec funnels everything through the state-owned SQDC.
Quebec shows most clearly how one province can rewrite a category. It sets the minimum age at 21, bans home cultivation, caps THC concentration at 30%, bans some product categories outright, and applies some of the strictest promotional rules in the country. A high-potency infused line that leads the market in Alberta can be structurally unsellable in Quebec.
Excise: the SKU multiplier nobody puts on the spec sheet
The federal excise duty on cannabis is the greater of $1 per gram or 10% of the sale. [6] That formula was set when cannabis sold for around $10 a gram. Today producers receive as little as $3 a gram, which pushes the effective rate to 33% or more. [7] In a Deloitte study of licensed producers, excise equalled about 45.9% of cost of goods sold in FY23. [7]
Then there are the stamps. Every package needs one, and Canada still uses 13 province- and territory-specific excise stamps rather than a single national stamp. Beyond excise stamps, producers must also account for cannabis packaging regulations covering labeling, warnings, and other packaging requirements. The federal government has signalled it wants to explore a unified stamp, which would cut relabeling, warehousing friction and production stoppages. [8] Until then, the same pre-roll pack destined for two provinces is, operationally, two different finished goods.
Reform is now on the table. The Expert Panel reviewing the Cannabis Act recommended that Finance Canada review the excise model, including the idea of larger, potency-based duties on higher-THC products. [9] If that happens, potency will move from a label line to a cost line.
What this means on the production floor
In Canada, the SKU matrix multiplies twice. First comes the product itself: strain × cone length × pack count × infusion type. Then the whole matrix multiplies again by province, for potency ceilings, excise stamps and packaging acceptance.
- Multi-pack dominance means count accuracy and packaging speed matter as much as fill speed.
- Compressed per-gram prices mean weight accuracy is margin. Every overfilled cone is product given away in a market where the producer may be earning around $3 a gram. At the same time, pre-roll underfilling and overfilling create different problems, making consistent fill weights an important part of production control.
- Province-specific stamps mean frequent short runs of otherwise identical packs, which puts changeover time at the centre of cost per unit. These production variables also affect pre-roll machine ROI, where output, labor, material waste, and downtime all influence the economics of automation.
- Potency-based duty, if adopted, would make infusion ratio a pricing decision as well as a recipe decision.
A single mid-size Canadian brand can carry more finished-goods variants than a Spanish social club will ever see. That is the real lesson of a mature market: standardization doesn’t remove complexity. It moves it somewhere else.
Next in the series: Spain, a country with one of Europe’s deepest rolling cultures and almost no packaged pre-roll market.
Frequently asked questions
What size are pre-roll cones?
The four standard pre-roll cone sizes are 70mm, 84mm, 98mm and 109mm. In Canada, the 109mm cone anchors the best-selling formats, including the 1-gram single and the 2-gram two-pack.
How big is Canada’s pre-roll market?
In 2025, pre-rolls generated about CAD $1.4 billion from 77.2 million units, a 33.9% share of the legal market, making them the country’s top cannabis category by revenue and units.
Are multi-packs or singles more popular in Canada?
Multi-packs, by a wide margin. They accounted for about 85% of pre-roll sales in 2024, while the classic 1-gram single took around 11%.
What is the THC limit in Quebec?
Quebec applies a 30% THC concentration cap to cannabis products sold through the SQDC, alongside a minimum age of 21 and a ban on home cultivation.
Why do Canadian cannabis products need different excise stamps?
Canada uses 13 province- and territory-specific excise stamps, so a product sold in several provinces needs a different stamp for each. The federal government has signalled interest in a single national stamp.
Sources
- Cannabis Business Times, “Pre-Rolls Surpass Flower as Canada’s Top-Earning Cannabis Category” (2025). https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/business-issues-benchmarks/canadian-cannabis-market/news/15755047/prerolls-surpass-flower-as-canadas-topearning-cannabis-category
- Cones Canada, “How to Launch a Canadian Pre-Roll Brand” (2026), citing Headset data. https://conescanada.ca/blog/how-to-launch-a-canadian-preroll-brand/
- MJBizDaily, “Pre-rolls close in on top cannabis sales spot in Canada” (2025). https://mjbizdaily.com/news/pre-rolls-close-in-on-top-cannabis-sales-spot-in-canada/402027/
- Marijuana Moment, “How Do The U.S. And Canadian Markets For Pre-Roll Marijuana Products Differ?” (2025). https://www.marijuanamoment.net/how-do-the-u-s-and-canadian-markets-for-pre-roll-marijuana-products-differ-op-ed/
- Headset, Cannabis Pre-Roll category overview (2026). https://www.headset.io/category/pre-roll
- CBC News, “Excise tax, store markups crushing cannabis industry, producer says”. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/cannabis-industry-producer-1.7434128
- StratCann, “New report calls for cannabis excise reform” (Deloitte / Cannabis Council of Canada). https://stratcann.com/news/new-report-calls-for-cannabis-excise-reform/
- CannabisRegulations.ai, “Canada 2025–2026: Preparing for Digital or Unified Excise Stamps” (2026). https://www.cannabisregulations.ai/cannabis-and-hemp-regulations-compliance-ai-blog/canada-2025-2026-digital-excise-stamps-cannabis-beverages-roadmap
- MFLRC, “Cannabis Excise Tax Reform in Canada: The Expert Panel’s Roadmap” (2026). https://mflrc.com/article/cannabis-excise-tax-reform-canada
