$1.05 billion: Illinois adult-use cannabis sales top $1 billion through September as monthly sales rise 12.8% from a year earlier

Illinois' licensed dispensaries sold $1,051,628,483.64 worth of adult-use cannabis in the first nine months of 2026, according to monthly figures the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) released on Oct. 29. The state's table lists 42,254,694 items sold from January through September when the monthly counts are added together. (The totals row in IDFPR's release shows "42,254,69," which appears to be missing a digit; the monthly figures add up to 42,254,694, the same total The Marijuana Herald reported.)

The Marijuana Herald, which wrote about the release on Nov. 1, described it as the market passing $1.05 billion in sales with more than 42.2 million products sold.

September by the numbers

Retailers reported $118,628,479.99 in adult-use sales in September from 4,773,495 items, according to IDFPR. In September 2025, the state reported $105,183,934.36 in sales from 4,187,861 items. That makes September 2026 about 12.8% higher in dollars and about 14% higher in items sold, figures The Marijuana Herald also reported and that match Hemp Law Watch's own calculation from the state table.

September was slightly below August, when retailers reported $122,748,403.65, a drop of about 3.4%. July was the strongest month of the year so far, at $125,985,178.31 and 5,070,444 items, the highest monthly item count in the 2026 table.

Dividing September's sales by its items sold gives an average of about $24.85 per item, compared with about $25.12 in September 2025, according to The Marijuana Herald's calculation, which Hemp Law Watch confirmed from the state's figures. The Herald said that indicates the revenue increase was "primarily driven by a greater number of products being sold."

Visitors' share of sales

IDFPR's table splits sales between Illinois residents and out-of-state customers. In September, Illinois residents accounted for $95,616,149.62 and out-of-state customers for $23,012,330.37, or about 19.4% of the month's total. For January through September, residents spent $844,701,557.94 and nonresidents $206,926,925.63, or about 19.7% of all adult-use sales.

Why the year-to-date comparison is tricky

On paper, the first nine months of 2026 trail the same period of 2025. Adding up IDFPR's 2025 monthly figures gives about $1.17 billion for January through September 2025, compared with the $1.05 billion reported for 2026. Over the same stretch, items sold rose from 38,236,086 to 42,254,694, an increase of about 10.5%, which The Marijuana Herald also reported.

IDFPR says the dollar figures from before its tracking change aren't directly comparable. Its release explains that the state moved to a new seed-to-sale tracking system, Metrc, that "help[s] retailers more accurately and reliably report actual sales, including all discounts and promotions at checkout." It adds that "a thorough review of past data indicates prior months collected some pre-discount prices," and that sales receipts and tax collections reported directly to the Illinois Department of Revenue "were accurate and not impacted" by the earlier pricing data.

The Marijuana Herald wrote that September's year-over-year comparison "provides a more consistent picture because both months were recorded after the transition to the newer tracking system." July and August 2026 were also higher than the same months of 2025, by about 9.6% and 6.6%, according to Hemp Law Watch's calculation from the state table. Taken together, July through September 2026 sales totaled about $367.4 million, compared with about $335.3 million a year earlier, an increase of roughly 9.5%.

The bigger fiscal-year picture

The new monthly figures follow the state's 2026 Annual Cannabis Report, dated Sept. 30, which covered the fiscal year from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026. That report showed total dispensary sales of $1,524,041,832 in fiscal 2026, down from $1,963,306,532 in fiscal 2025, a gap the state largely tied to lower prices, more stores, discounting and the change in how sales are tracked. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Oct. 12 that the state's adult-use tax collections were more than $456 million in fiscal 2026, down from about $474 million the year before, while consumption rose.

The Daily Herald, in its Oct. 11 coverage of the same report, quoted IDFPR spokesperson Kimber Beckler calling a straight comparison of sales across the system change an "apples to oranges comparison." The Daily Herald also reported that industry members pointed to competition from intoxicating hemp products sold outside the dispensary system and from lower-priced legal markets in neighboring states, while out-of-state buyer traffic from Michigan had improved after Michigan added a 24% wholesale tax on adult-use marijuana in 2026.

Hemp rules change the competition

The figures arrive as Illinois and federal hemp rules are both shifting. Senate Bill 3222, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed in June, immediately banned the sale of intoxicating hemp products such as delta-8 to people under 21 and brought those products under the state's existing cannabis laws, Capitol News Illinois reported in July. Under the same law, "beginning Nov. 12, non-intoxicating CBD products with less than 0.4 milligrams of THC will be allowed to be sold outside the regulated market," the news service reported. The law also lets all dispensaries register to serve medical patients and allows curbside and drive-through pickup for patients.

At the federal level, a change to the legal definition of hemp that Congress passed in November 2025 is set to take effect mostly on Dec. 11, 2026, after a stopgap funding law signed Sept. 2 pushed it back from Nov. 12. That law, Public Law 119-103, keeps a Nov. 12 date for synthetic cannabinoids that can't be naturally produced by the plant. MPR News has described the federal change as a national ban on most intoxicating hemp products; it takes effect on that schedule unless Congress acts again.

What comes next

IDFPR released the January-through-August figures on Sept. 21 and the January-through-September figures on Oct. 29. October will be the last full month of sales before Illinois' Nov. 12 hemp date and the federal Dec. 11 date. Whether those changes move customers toward licensed dispensaries won't show up in the state's sales tables until later releases.

The state's figures cover adult-use sales only and do not include medical cannabis sales. They are not adjusted for inflation, and the state's cannabis sales data page notes that totals can change as corrections, recalls and voids are processed.

Hemp Law Watch is summarizing state data and published reporting. This is not legal, tax or investment advice.