Eurospace Facts & Figures 2025 Sneak Peek

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Eurospace announces the release of the 29th edition of the annual facts & figures report

f&f 2025 cover

f&f 2025 Cover

About the survey

Every year, Eurospace, the association of the European space manufacturing industry, issues the annual update of its facts & figures statistical series.

Since its inception, the statistical collection aims at measuring the value of the market for space systems design, development and production in Europe (i.e. the space industry manufacturing activity). Space systems are defined in detail (see “products definitions”) in order to ensure an appropriate data collection and to avoid misinterpretation of the data sets.

This statistical effort is supported by two main driving principles:

  • The focus on manufacturing activities (with the exclusion of all services related to the exploitation of space systems: launch services and satellite operations). Service activities associated to the manufacturing process of space systems (such as engineering and test services, consultancies etc.) are included in the perimeter of the survey. A share of ground systems operations is also included, when they are performed for Space agencies in Europe.
  • The effort to measure the value of the end-market, with the elimination of all inter-sectoral business that could be counted twice or more.

Perimeter of the survey

The Eurospace facts & figures survey focuses on measuring the economic value of industrial activities associated to the design, development and manufacturing of space systems (also called the upstream sector) in Europe.

It does not consider non-space products (such as missiles or consumer-end terminals such as GPS receivers, Satellite TV receivers and dishes, etc.) nor the provision of services based on the exploitation of space assets. This means that the revenues and employment of such companies as Eutelsat, Paradigm, Inmarsat, Arianespace, SES Global, and other operators are not included in the perimeter of the survey.

Data Collection

The data collection is supported by companies with space activities operating in Europe (not limited to Eurospace membership). Companies answer a questionnaire providing detailed information on their sales and employment relevant to space systems design, development and manufacturing. All information released to Eurospace is protected by a confidentiality agreement. The quality of the survey is only as good as the data provided by participating companies.

Most companies in the space manufacturing sector have participated at least once to the Eurospace survey in the past. The main players (companies with more than 100 space employees) usually support the survey on a very regular basis, while smaller players may only sporadically support the survey . When a reply is missing from a company, it is supplemented by an estimate based on a previous reply received from that company, and/or publicly available information on the company.

The space manufacturing sector in Europe is at the same time very fragmented and very concentrated. The 30 largest space units in Europe make for almost 70% of total employment of the sector. The remaining smaller players representing barely 30% of employment. It is also interesting to note that most smaller players work almost exclusively as subcontractors to the largest players. A new breed of companies has entered the sector in the past few years, supported by a large wave of company creation funded by private equity and venture capital. These new space start-ups now provide a sizeable share of employment in the sector, but are often in pore-revenue stage, and do not contribute large volumes of measurable business in the survey. Only a small fraction of them participates in the survey and for the most of them the relevant data points must be gathered from open source information.

From a statistical point of view, this means that an efficient data collection shall focus on collecting at least the main replies (the large players, and particularly the prime contractors) that will provide a good assessment of the final sales. Collecting additional replies from increasingly smaller players, adds a layer of detail to the survey and improve, sometimes very significantly, the measurement of employment; but it  does not affect as much the overall value of final sales and has a limited impact on the market data.

Survey representativeness

The Eurospace facts & figures economic model counts a total of 509 individual entries in 2025, representing a total of 742 companies/entities. During the 2025 survey we updated 387 entities, representing 89% of final sales and 79% of space employment. We believe that our survey is the most accurate in the European space sector both from the methodological and from the data collection points of view.

Survey 2025 – main results and key trends

The latest f&f report is only available to companies having supported the survey and to European institutions. Contact pierre.lionnet(@)eurospace.org to check whether you are eligible for a free PDF copy.

All others can download:

Note that all elements of the Eurospace Facts and Figures publication, including, data, charts and reports are provided for information purposes to the general public via .www.eurospace.org. All rights to use, repost or reproduce any excerpt of text, tables and charts are reserved by Eurospace. View our copyright policy here.

Key data and information

Employment growth is furthered in 2024, with more than 66000 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) registered in the sector. As in 2023, the growth is mostly driven by the expansion of new and emerging start-ups in Europe that have thrived in recent years and have created more than 10000 new jobs in the sector in just 7 years. This new demand for space-qualified jobs creates a competitive tension on the workforce market, and large historic players have reported difficulties in filling up open positions. A consequence of this surge in work demand is the uneven growth of workforce costs that conflate with the inflationary tension already registered in 2022 and 2023 on critical supplies (materials, energy, electronics) to hampering the competitiveness of European space systems.

Definitions

  • Direct industry employment: personnel employed directly by the company (permanent staff, measured in FTE).
  • Other personnel working on site: personnel directly supporting company activities supplied by a third party (interim workers, engineering, etc. measured in FTE).
  • Final sales: sector sales to final customers (equal to consolidated sales).

Markets segments

The European space industry has access to quite large, yet fragmented, domestic markets, its core markets. It also exports its systems outside Europe. In both markets, space systems are sold to a variety of customers; mostly public entities such as space agencies in Europe and worldwide, but also private customers such as satellite or launch service operators.

Final sales to institutional programmes have registered a 6,1% YoY increase from 5968M€ in 2023 to 6335M€ in 2024. A resurgence in final sales after the major drop suffered in 2020 with the COVID-19 crisis. The sector has benefitted from the growing commitment to space programmes funded by national budgets (via ESA or national civil and military programmes) and the European Union. European manufacturers rely on key institutional application segments such as telecommunications, GNSS and Earth Observation. Still, this segment fails to produce all of its expected impact on industry revenues due to the fact that many European programmes face important technical or administrative delays resulting in lower spending as a whole, and lesser revenues registered in the industry.

On a brighter side, Europe confirms its excellent position on the space systems export markets. Eurospace monitors the value of space systems export/import in the past decade and found that space systems exports represented 9,8B$ in the spacecraft segment, and 4,2B$ in the launcher segment, generating a net surplus to the European trade balance worth 180M$ every year in the past decade. However, we note a trade deficit worth 200M$ annually in the launch services segment as European customers have procured in the past decade more launches from non-European launch service providers than from European launch service providers. If European customers, in particular on the institutional segment, applied an unfailing European preference, the European space industry would register close to one billion of additional revenues every year, and could support more than 9000 additional jobs.

Final sales by Customer Segment (M€)

Final sales by Product Segment (M€)