Five months ago, Uber promised to storm five new European countries with its food-delivery app. It just quietly hit the brakes, and the reason looks a lot like a €10bn takeover.
Uber has paused five of its seven planned 2026 European launches, the Financial Times reported. Uber announced the push in February, targeting Austria, Norway, the Czech Republic, Romania and Greece. Those five are now on hold. Only Denmark and Finland, where it has already launched, are going ahead.
The official reason
Uber's public line is momentum. Its recent launches in Finland and Denmark went well, it told the FT, so it wants to focus on the markets it already serves. The original plan was bold. Uber expected an extra $1bn in gross bookings over three years across a crowded European food-delivery market.
The likelier reason
A second story explains the retreat better, and it involves a takeover. Uber is chasing Delivery Hero, the German food-delivery giant that rejected its roughly €10bn bid in May. Uber already owns about 19.5 per cent of the company, and it keeps buying in.
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Here is the catch. Delivery Hero operates in almost every market Uber just paused. Its Foodora brand runs in Austria, Norway and the Czech Republic, efood covers Greece, and Glovo operates in Romania.
Launching Uber Eats against the incumbent, then trying to buy it, would invite an antitrust headache. An industry source told TechCrunch that pausing the expansion could ease exactly those concerns.
Why it matters
Delivery Hero is no small prize. It claims 40,000 staff across 65 countries, and it leads food delivery outside the US, with strength in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and Asia. Oddly, it no longer operates in its home market of Germany, after a rival forced it out in 2021. Buying it would hand Uber a sprawling delivery empire in a single move.
Uber has not confirmed this as the motive, and it calls the pause focus, not retreat. But the timing is hard to ignore.
Europe's competition regulators are unusually assertive, and a company circling a target this big tends to avoid stepping on its toes. Delivery Hero, meanwhile, says it welcomes Uber's investment.
For now, Uber's European map has two new pins instead of seven, and the missing five may say more about dealmaking than about appetite.