The Strategic Sector Committee for the Espace Aerospace Valley sector, comprising 18 representatives from the ecosystem, has updated its roadmap and associated action plan, taking into account, in particular, the National Space Strategy published in November 2025. This roadmap is now structured around five strategic priorities: ‘Producing competitive space systems in France’, ‘Scaling up downstream activities’, ‘Supporting sovereignty’, ‘Sustainability of space activities’ and ‘Supporting the sector internationally’.

In line with the commitments signed in 2023 between the European Space Agency and Aerospace Valley, the ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC) Sud is rolling out its activities with the aim of selecting around twenty companies per year and continuing to incubate around thirty, strengthening the community of incubatees and programme alumni, and bolstering its presence in the region through events co-organised with and for local ecosystems.
Meanwhile, DISTRICT by Aerospace Valley continues to expand with the arrival of new residents such as Dataionics, Fentiss and Skypuzzler. Also worth noting are the significant rounds of funding secured by certain alumni, such as Look Up Space and U-Space.

Furthermore, in addition to these initiatives, Aerospace Valley played an active role in ActinSpace®, both as a co-organiser of the local Montpellier event in late January and during the final rounds in Bordeaux on 1 and 2 April 2026. It is worth noting that three out of the four teams in the French final were from the Occitanie and Nouvelle-Aquitaine regions!
Around thirty events relating to the space sector were organised or co-organised by the Cluster during this period, for the benefit of our members as well as ESA BIC incubatees and alumni. These events covered a wide variety of topics: information webinars on funding sources, hosting foreign delegations, B2B meetings, ‘space meet-ups’ in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, a space technology day in Occitanie, themed after-work events in Montpellier, and dedicated ConnectByCNES events in Nouvelle-Aquitaine…

 Furthermore, as every year, the Cluster’s space team attended numerous trade fairs and conferences alongside several of our members: the ‘Ondes & Espace’ Day, the ‘Assises du New Space’, the ‘Robotics & Space’ Day, Paris Space Week…
Through its two collective initiatives, NSF (NewSpace Factory) and SCALE (Space Climate League), Aerospace Valley has continued to work on behalf of SMEs to help them access new domestic and export markets.
NSF attended international trade fairs such as the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, USA, in April 2025 (organising meetings with the Japanese delegation and the Italian delegation from Emilia-Romagna) and Space Tech in Bremen, Germany, in November 2025. However, as the market has evolved and the number of players has increased, the NSF brand was phased out in early 2026 to make way for the Cluster’s comprehensive international support programme, which is designed to be broader in scope in order to meet the needs of as many members as possible.

For its part, the SCALE collective took part in events such as UNOC in Cannes (through participation in an international round table), the ‘La Baleine’ exhibition via a conference, and GeoDataDays via a stand. It also met with Airbus Defence and Space to discuss tree health, produced a joint proposal presented to ADEME, and responded to a call for tenders from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts).
More generally, regarding the downstream sector (spatial data-based applications), the Cluster contributes throughout the year to the COSPACE group dedicated to this topic. In particular, Aerospace Valley took part in a specific working group with CNES and the DGE to define KPIs for monitoring the sector’s economic performance, and is working on a state-of-the-art review of tree health and Earth observation as part of CNES’s FPCUP project.
Since July 2025, the Cluster has also been the coordinator of the ConnectByCNES (CBC) platform for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Several initiatives have been developed within this framework: promoting the various CBC schemes, connecting stakeholders with CNES experts, recruiting candidates for the ESA BIC programme, organising a gathering of space ambassadors in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and promoting and supporting the ActInSpace® event…
In September 2025, the Cluster’s Space team also renewed its partnership agreement with LISA (the Armed Forces’ Space Innovation Laboratory) of the CDE (Space Command) for a period of three years, and provides dedicated services in this capacity.

Finally, support for project development has continued unabated. The Cluster has accredited or supported 67 space projects, 44 of which have been funded by regional, national and European schemes. These projects focused in particular on propulsion technologies, new manufacturing facilities, the utilisation of space data and digital twins.

SELECTED WEBINARS AND EVENTS

• April 2025: Space Symposium, Colorado Springs: Aerospace Valley and 17 of its members (including 7 NSF members) were present at the France/CNES stand. 25 B2B meetings and visits by delegations.
• July 2025: Meeting with Isabelle Benezeth, inter-ministerial coordinator for Copernicus and GEO at the Ministry of Research and Innovation. Over 30 people attended.
• November 2025: Space Tech Expo Bremen: Aerospace Valley stand with 9 members, including 5 NSF members.
• December 2025: ‘Montpellier In Space – Life in Space’ after-work event: Over 100 people from the research and industrial sectors discussed the theme of space as a laboratory for biological innovation.

EUROPE FOCUS

Aerospace Valley and a number of French, Spanish and Portuguese partners have secured a new European project: AGROSPACE. Launched on 1 June 2025 for a duration of 36 months, this project represents an unprecedented collaboration between the space and agriculture sectors, which will lead to the development of a cross-sectoral innovation strategy based on three pillars: research, support for public policy and market development.
Aerospace Valley is also involved in three other European projects involving the space ecosystem:
•    SPACE4Cities supports the development of services using space data for city managers. Several SME demonstrators have already been funded, and the final phase of the project will fund real-world testing of solutions in several European cities.
•    PCP-WISE focuses on the use of space data for water management. The Cluster is involved in the technical evaluation of the supported projects and leads the Stakeholder Observatory Group, which brings together around twenty European public bodies interested in the project’s results.
•    VALORADA funds the co-development and testing of new climate data analysis tools, deployed across five European regions, including the Occitanie region in France.
Furthermore, Aerospace Valley is contributing to the ESA’s URBIVERDE project, which aims to establish a platform to showcase services that help cities adapt to climate change. The Cluster is raising the project’s profile and contributing its knowledge of the downstream ecosystem.