Spain Drone Market 2026 Forecast

Demand in the Spanish drone market splits along the same defence and civil lines found across Europe, with the defence side concentrated in a small number of large, named programmes and the civil side spread across narrower, use-specific authorisations. On the defence and government side, the Ministry of Defence is the buyer of record for the two largest named drone programmes with 2026 activity: SANTAM, a 364 million euro contract signed with Indra in 2026 for 147 Tarsis-family tactical drones serving the Army, Navy, and Air and Space Force, and SIRTAP, an earlier, larger contract with Airbus Defence and Space, 494,910,035 euros for nine tactical ISR systems, signed in 2023 and reaching its ground-test and planned first-flight milestones in 2026. Both sit alongside Spain's industrial role in the OCCAR-managed, four-nation Eurodrone programme, in which Airbus leads from its Getafe site and Spanish supplier Airtificial was selected in May 2026 to manufacture composite engine cowlings.

On the civil and commercial side, the clearest named activity divides into three uses. Medical logistics is the most developed: Catalonia's Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) has run drone trials carrying pathology samples and pharmacy supplies between rural health centres and hospitals in Terres de l'Ebre and the Vall d'en Bas, under an authorisation AESA granted to operator CATUAV, trading as BCN Drone Center. Agricultural spraying operates under AESA's PDRA-S01[F] predefined risk assessment, a national framework that Spanish manufacturer Drone Hopper's spraying platforms and the CDTI-funded EXTINCIA firefighting-drone consortium both sit alongside. Infrastructure inspection is led by Navarra-based Fuvex, whose long-range electric drones inspect power grid and pipeline assets for clients including the UFD-Naturgy electricity network.

AESA is the national competent authority designated to implement, supervise and enforce UAS regulation in Spanish territory, administering operator registration, remote-pilot certification, and operational declarations and authorisations in the specific category, according to AESA's own description of its role. The European framework runs through Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947, which has applied to UAS operations since 31 December 2020 in its consolidated form, and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/945, setting UAS technical standards. Spain supplements that framework domestically with Real Decreto 517/2024, of 4 June, developing the legal regime for civil use of unmanned aircraft systems and covering activities outside the European regulation's scope; it entered into force on 25 June 2024.

A national-to-European transition closed inside the current window. AESA stated, in a notice published 9 December 2025, that the validity of Spain's national standard scenarios (STS-ES) for specific-category UAS operations "finaliza" on 31 December 2025, with a coexistence period between STS-ES and the European standard scenarios STS-EU running since 1 January 2024. Recognised training entities that had trained remote pilots under STS-ES before that deadline could still submit student declarations until 31 January 2026. From 1 January 2026, only the European standard scenarios, designated STS-01 and STS-02, remain valid for specific-category operations in Spain, so an operator whose authorisation still rested on an STS-ES declaration after that date is not, on the evidence reviewed for this page, permitted to keep flying under it.

Airspace integration runs on a separate track through ENAIRE, the state air navigation service provider identified as Spain's implementing agent for U-space. According to trade press coverage of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility's announcement, the ministry presented a National Action Plan for U-space Deployment and Zoning covering 2026 to 2030 (PANDU+) in June 2026, developed with AESA and ENAIRE and with Air Force General Staff collaboration, succeeding the plan that had run from 2022 to 2025; this page could not locate and fetch the ministry's own release to confirm the announcement date more precisely than "June 2026." ENAIRE, through its CRIDA research centre, led the EU-funded SPATIO project, which held an "Open Day" in A Coruña in mid-June 2026 demonstrating conflict-prediction, airspace-capacity and operation-density-limitation U-space services in live trials at Loring aerodrome in Madrid; the project involved more than 20 European organisations and carried EUR 7 million in EU funding, according to trade press coverage of the event.

Agricultural spraying is authorised through AESA's PDRA-S01[F] predefined risk assessment, which covers unmanned aircraft of up to 3 metres maximum characteristic dimension, flown VLOS at a maximum distance of 500 metres from the pilot, below 30 metres above ground level except near obstacles, over controlled terrestrial zones in sparsely populated areas. Under a PDRA, the operator does not have to prepare an independent risk assessment, since AESA has already completed the underlying analysis and published the required mitigation measures; the page reviewed for this page did not carry a publication date for PDRA-S01[F] itself, so that date is not stated here.

The largest disclosed drone contract by value with 2026 activity is SIRTAP. Airbus Defence and Space's contract with the Ministry of Defence, signed 29 November 2023, carries an exact value of 494,910,035 euros, paid across eight annual instalments through 2030, for nine systems, each comprising three aircraft and a ground control station, plus initial logistical support and two training simulators; sector estimates cited in trade coverage place the programme's broader value closer to 595 million euros, a figure this page treats as an estimate rather than the contracted sum. The aircraft completed ground testing, including braking, steering and sensor validation, at Getafe Air Base on 15 June 2026, roughly a year behind the original schedule, with first flight planned for the fourth quarter of 2026 at the CEUS unmanned-systems test centre in Huelva, operated by Spain's National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA).

The largest drone contract actually signed inside the 2026 forecast window is SANTAM. The Ministry of Defence contracted Indra for 147 Tarsis-family tactical drones across 49 systems, distributed between 38 Tarsis (vertical takeoff and landing) sets and 11 Tarsis W (conventional takeoff) sets, each system comprising three aircraft; the programme is valued at 364 million euros and is reported to support all three armed forces, the Army, Navy, and Air and Space Force. First units are scheduled for early 2028, with one trade outlet reporting deliveries running from 2028 to 2030, and the programme is expected to create around 500 direct jobs across Indra and its supplier base.

Indra's manufacturing footprint is expanding through two separate 2026 deals. On 13 January 2026, Indra Group and the UAE's EDGE Group agreed to form a joint manufacturing entity in Spain for loitering munitions and smart weapons, with Indra planning to invest between 15 and 20 million euros in a new facility in León province; the agreement signing was witnessed by Spain's Secretary of State for Defence and the UAE's ambassador to Spain. Separately, trade press described Indra's new drone production centre in the Villadangos del Páramo industrial area of León, carrying an investment of nearly 12 million euros and creating around 200 new positions plus 150 additional engineering roles, as intended to produce the TARSIS tactical system, the VALERO multipurpose weapon system, EDGE-developed loitering munitions, and Class 1 UAS under 150 kilograms for defence and civilian use, with serial production of munition-equipped drones planned to begin in 2027. Indra separately signed a memorandum of understanding with engineering consultancy Tresca in March 2026 to support the León facility's build-out.

Civil-side funding runs at a smaller scale and through different channels. Spain's PERTE Aeroespacial recovery-plan programme, whose stated ambition is to mobilise more than 4,500 million euros through 2026 and create 14,000 jobs, included, according to reporting on its earlier phase, two loans to Airbus totalling 2,137 million euros in December 2022, of which 1,429 million euros was allocated to a drone programme; the source reviewed for this page did not name the specific drone platform this loan supported, so it is recorded here as programme-level funding rather than attributed to any single named aircraft. On the research side, TECNALIA announced, on 16 July 2026, the CDTI-funded EXTINCIA project, led by CLUE Technologies with participation from Aeromedia, Bastan, Drone Hopper, Helion and Telespazio and technical support from CATEC and ITG, to develop an electric heavy-lift firefighting drone capable of vertical and horizontal water discharges of up to 600 kilograms.

Indra has become the closest thing to a national drone prime over 2026, holding three separate named programmes at once: SANTAM, the 147-aircraft Tarsis tactical drone contract; the EDGE joint venture for loitering munitions and smart weapons; and its own León production centre for the TARSIS, VALERO and Class 1 UAS lines. Trade press described the León facility as Indra's most advanced multipurpose drone factory, a characterisation attributed to that coverage rather than to an independent Drone Intelligence assessment. Indra's engineering director described the León build-out as part of a strategy to "strengthen industrial capabilities at a very rapid pace across the country," working with supply-chain partners including Tresca.

Airbus Defence and Space is the other named defence-industrial anchor, running the SIRTAP programme toward its planned fourth-quarter 2026 first flight while leading Spain's industrial role in the Eurodrone programme from Getafe, which the company states hosts the U950 Eurodrone's lead engineering office and the SIRTAP final assembly line. Airbus draws on a Spanish supplier base for Eurodrone workshare: composite engineering group Airtificial was selected in May 2026 to manufacture engine cowlings for the platform, a contract whose value was not disclosed in the sources reviewed for this page.

On the civil and commercial side, competitive activity is thinner and organised around named operators holding specific authorisations rather than broad market share. Fuvex, founded in 2013 and based in Navarra, operates long-range electric drones for power-grid, pipeline and agricultural inspection, reporting more than 25,000 kilometres of power-line inspections completed and a contract with the UFD-Naturgy electricity network. CATUAV, trading as BCN Drone Center, holds the medical-logistics authorisation described above. Drone Hopper, a Madrid-based manufacturer of self-guided spraying drones originally developed for firefighting, sits inside the CDTI-funded EXTINCIA consortium alongside Telespazio's Spanish operation, positioning it in both the agricultural-spraying and firefighting segments of the civil market. No single civil operator in the sources reviewed for this page holds authorisations spanning more than one of these three use cases.

Three research houses publish standalone Spain drone market estimates, and their figures for the same national market disagree by more than double on comparable base years. IMARC Group puts the market at USD 545.4 million in 2025, rising to USD 1,318.7 million by 2034 at a 10.31 percent compound annual growth rate for 2026 to 2034. Market Research Future puts its base year at USD 370.05 million, stated on the same page as both 2023 and 2024, rising to USD 1,561.01 million by 2035 at a 13.981 percent CAGR for 2025 to 2035. NextMSC puts the market meaningfully higher, at USD 844.9 million in 2025, rising to USD 2,676.5 million by 2035 at an 11.58 percent revenue CAGR (and a separate 15.40 percent unit-volume CAGR, from 29,000 units in 2025 to 132,000 units by 2035) for 2026 to 2035.

None of the three fetched reports discloses a scope definition, hardware alone against hardware plus services, civil against civil plus defence, or consumer platforms against commercial and government fleets, that would reconcile a spread running from roughly USD 370 million to USD 845 million on overlapping base years. Each figure in the table below is treated on this page as a Tier 5 estimate: a market-sizing figure published without a disclosed estimation methodology, included for comparison rather than as an authoritative number. The gap is stated here as a documented feature of the public record on this market, not resolved into a single house figure this page treats as correct.