Europe’s Unresolved Equation in Space

The European space industry has strong technological capabilities, a high level of innovation, and ambitious growth targets. But the next stage of development will not be decided in orbit alone – it will be shaped by the industrial structures behind it.

The MHP Space Report 2026 shows that Europe’s space industry is facing a fundamental scaling challenge. 74.0 percent of the decision-makers surveyed expect a significant expansion of production capacities. At the same time, 65.9 percent rate current scalability as only medium to very low.

The ambition is clear: more programs, higher volumes, faster implementation. Yet many companies remain strongly project-driven. This is where the central challenge emerges: How can technological excellence be transformed into a scalable, efficient, and competitive space industry? 

More capital, more personnel, and new technologies alone will not be enough. What matters is whether the industry can make the transition to repeatable structures: with standardized processes, modular platforms, robust production networks, and closer integration across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and partner ecosystems.

On behalf of MHP, Civey surveyed 577 decision-makers from the aerospace sector in Germany, the UK, France, and Italy. The report analyzes where Europe’s space industry stands today, which bottlenecks are preventing scalability, and which industrial model is needed for the next level of maturity.

Download the MHP Space Report 2026 now

Gain in-depth insights into the industrial future of the European space industry: with current survey results, country perspectives, and concrete fields of action for scalable value creation.

Download now

• Why Europe’s space industry cannot simply shift from project logic to product logic, but needs a hybrid model combining customer-specific value creation with repeatable platform capabilities.
• Why growth only becomes financially viable when scaling is organized industrially: through efficiency, standardization, and production-oriented excellence rather than relying solely on additional resources.
• Why the technological direction is largely set – for example in Software Defined Satellites, sovereignty, digitalization, and AI – while the real bottleneck lies in implementation.
• How scaling will increasingly emerge through the interaction of primes, suppliers, partners, and production ecosystems – and why industrial performance must increasingly be understood as network-based.
• Which different starting points Germany, the UK, France, and Italy reveal – and what this means for scaling the European space industry.