Texas is going from 3 dispensary operators to 15. Here's who won what.
HB 46 raised the cap on licensed dispensing organizations from three to fifteen, and DPS
has now conditionally awarded twelve of them by public health region. Then it corrected
the list, rescinded three awards, and added three companies nobody had reported. Most
articles on this subject are naming licensees who no longer hold a license.
The correction matters. On 2026-05-08 DPS released a
corrected tabulation after a problem with how applicants had been scored. Three previously
announced winners lost their conditional awards and went back on the eligibility list; three
unannounced companies took their places. Cresco Labs is the most notable casualty. The table
below is the corrected set, not the 2025 one.
The 12 conditional licensees, by region
Region
Area covered
Licensee
1
Panhandle & South Plains (Lubbock, Amarillo)
Trulieve TX, Inc.
2
Northwest (Abilene, Wichita Falls)
Dilatso, LLC
3
DFW Metroplex
Texas Patient Access, LLC
3
DFW Metroplex
Lonestar Compassionate Care Group, LLC
4
Northeast (Tyler, Longview)
Sawtooth Texas LLC
5
Southeast (Beaumont, Golden Triangle)
Bayou City Medical Dispensary
6
Houston & Gulf Coast
PC TX OPCO LLC dba PharmaCann
6
Houston & Gulf Coast
Bluebonnet Technologies, LLC
8
San Antonio & Hill Country
Lone Star Bioscience, Inc.
9
Permian Basin (Midland, Odessa)
GTI Texas, LLC dba RISE Dispensaries
10
El Paso
Verano Texas, LLC
11
Rio Grande Valley & Coastal Bend
Texa OP dba TexaRx
Status check, 2026-10-12. Nothing on this list has moved
since the 2026-05-08 correction. DPS has published no further tabulation
changes, no conditional licensee has cleared final approval, and not one new counter has
opened anywhere in Texas. The program still dispenses from the same three operators it
has had since 2018. Cresco Labs, the most prominent of the three rescinded applicants,
remains on the eligibility list and has said publicly that it is evaluating its options;
it stands first in line if a current conditional licensee fails to satisfy its
requirements.
What "conditional" buys you as a patient right now
Nothing yet, and it is worth being blunt about that, because the announcements read like
openings and they are not. A conditionally awarded licensee still has to clear final due
diligence with DPS, build or convert facilities that meet the program's security and
testing requirements, and pass inspection. Only then does it dispense. The statutory clock
is 24 months from licensure to fully operational, after which DPS can revoke.
What it does buy is certainty about the map. Each of these companies has a claimed region,
and the regions that have been starved for a decade now have somebody on the hook for
them: Verano in El Paso, RISE in the Permian Basin, Trulieve across the Panhandle and
South Plains, TexaRx in the Valley and Coastal Bend. Those four awards cover essentially
every part of Texas that has never had a pickup counter.
Who is likely to move first
The multistate operators, for the unromantic reason that they have done this before.
Trulieve, Verano, PharmaCann, and GTI all run cultivation and retail in other states and
can port compliance playbooks, staffing models, and supply chains into Texas rather than
inventing them. The Texas-only entities on this list, several of which have almost no
public footprint, are the ones worth watching skeptically. In every state expansion of
this kind, a share of conditional winners simply never open.
Region 7 got nothing, and it is the strangest part of the story
Public Health Region 7 covers Austin, Waco, Temple, Bryan-College Station, Killeen, and
Fort Cavazos. It received zero awards across both phases. The defensible half of that
logic is Austin: both major incumbents are headquartered in the metro and Central Texas
has always been the best-served part of the program.
The indefensible half is Killeen. Fort Cavazos is one of the largest military
installations in the world, the surrounding community has an enormous population of
veterans with exactly the conditions HB 46 was expanded to cover, and its patients remain
dependent on delivery from Bastrop and Austin with no counter of their own and no licensee
obligated to build one. Every other underserved region in Texas now has somebody on the
hook. Region 7's underserved half has nobody.
What that leaves for patients around Fort Cavazos →
What actually changes for you before then
Between now and the first new opening, the program you can use is the one that already
exists: 3 operators, 27 pickup counters, and statewide
delivery that reaches every Texas address today. New licenses are a reason to expect
better pricing and shorter drives in a year or two. They are not a reason to wait.
Nothing on the license list above sells anything yet. The program you can actually use is the one already running: three operators, statewide delivery, and every counter open today.
No firm dates exist, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. A conditional licensee has 24 months from licensure to become fully operational or DPS can revoke, which puts the outer bound in 2028 for the ones corrected in May 2026. Realistically the first new counters appear in late 2026 or 2027, and the multistate operators with existing cultivation elsewhere will move fastest because they are not learning the business from scratch.
What does "conditional" mean? Are they licensed or not?
Conditionally awarded means DPS has selected them and they must now clear final due diligence, build compliant facilities, and pass inspection before dispensing anything. It is a genuine license in the sense that nobody else can take that region slot, and it is not a license in the sense that they cannot sell you a gram today. Cresco Labs found out how conditional it is: its award was rescinded outright in the corrected tabulation.
Has anything changed since the May correction?
No, and that is worth saying plainly, because a tracker that goes quiet is indistinguishable from a tracker that has been abandoned. Re-checked 2026-10-12: DPS has announced no further changes to the tabulation, no conditional licensee has cleared final approval, and no new dispensary has opened. The three rescinded applicants remain on the eligibility list. We check this page against DPS announcements and operator filings and re-date it either way, so the date at the top tells you when someone last looked, not when something last happened.
Why did DPS re-do the list?
DPS issued a corrected tabulation on 2026-05-08 after finding a problem with how it had scored and ranked applicants. Three companies previously announced as winners lost their conditional awards and were moved back to the eligibility list, and three companies that had not been announced qualified instead. If you read a 2025 article naming the licensees, it is now wrong, and a surprising number of those articles are still live and still ranking.
Will any of this make product cheaper?
Almost certainly, eventually. Texas ran nine years on three operators, which is a market structure with no reason to compete on price. Going to fifteen changes that, and the multistate operators entering here run mature price ladders in other states. The caveat worth stating: a licensee has two years to open, several will move slowly, and at least one will probably never open at all. Price relief in this program is a 2027 story, not a 2026 one.
Does a new license in my region mean a store in my town?
Not necessarily. A regional award establishes where the licensee is anchored, not how many counters it opens or which city gets the first one. HB 46 also dropped the old rule that forced operators to spread across regions before adding a second site in any one of them, so a licensee is free to concentrate where the patients are. Expect the biggest city in each region first, and everything else after that.
What happens to Region 7?
Nothing, and that is the anomaly nobody writes about. Region 7 covers Austin, Waco, Temple, Killeen, and Fort Cavazos, and it received zero new licenses in either phase. The reasoning is presumably that the incumbents are already headquartered there, which is true of Austin and not remotely true of Killeen. A garrison town with one of the densest concentrations of PTSD-qualifying patients in the state got no new access at all.
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