Across three days this month, there were two major events providing meaningful insight into how the European—and potentially the global—space industry is likely to develop in the coming years. On 8 September 2026, the UK Government published its new Space Strategy (the “Strategy”), setting out the UK’s vision to be a competitive space power, backed by GBP 7.8m in funding through to 2030. Over the next two days, on 9-10 September, political leaders, agency chiefs, and industry executives from ninety countries attended the International Space Summit (the “Summit”), to debate key space policy issues, including orbital debris and European launch sovereignty.

The Strategy understandably sets out more detailed policies for the space sector in the UK than the discussions at the Summit, but we expect to see further detail from the EU in due course, particularly as the legislative process around the European Commission’s proposal for a Space Act (which we describe in more detail here) continue. In any event, however, the Strategy and French President Emmanuel Macron’s closing statement at the Summit share key themes. In particular, they both focus on government investment as a driver of the private space industry and the need for a high degree of “sovereignty” for certain space-based activities, i.e., a high degree of domestic control arising from secure space infrastructure and services, and domestic capacity to provide that infrastructure and those services. For more details about the EU’s broader push towards tech sovereignty by advancing these principles, see our prior post here.

Below, we summarize the main points arising from the Strategy and the Summit in more detail, consider further the areas of overlap and divergence, and set out potential next steps for organizations developing and utilizing space services.