WARSAW, Poland will host a new European Space Agency center focused on civil security and resilience, marking the first ESA facility established in an eastern flank member state and the first outside the agency’s 11 founding nations.
The announcement was made July 13 at a joint press conference at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, and Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski.
“Poland is becoming one of the European leaders in the broadly understood field of space activity,” Tusk said. “This covers the development of science, technology and also business and security.”
The new ESA Civil Security and Resilience Center will be responsible for dual-use research and activities spanning civil and security applications. It will operate in complementarity with ESA’s existing European Space Security and Education Centre (ESEC) in Redu, Belgium, contributing to a coordinated European approach to emerging security challenges.
“The new ESA Centre will mark a new chapter for ESA and a major step for Poland which has rapidly become one of the driving forces in Europe’s space sector,” Aschbacher said. “As Europe continues to strengthen its resilience in an increasingly challenging environment, the Centre will help build the capabilities we need to protect our interests, support our citizens and act with confidence.”
Poland joined ESA in 2012 and has significantly expanded its space capabilities and industrial base since then. The center will build on that growth and on Poland’s commitment to ESA’s European Resilience from Space (ERS) initiative, which aims to strengthen crisis-response capabilities through faster access to reliable data and secure communications.
Preparations for pre-operational activities are scheduled to begin in 2027, though no concrete opening date has been announced.
Alongside the center announcement, Poland unveiled substantial new financial commitments to its space sector. The country’s allocation for optional ESA programs, covering satellite data services and robotics, has doubled to 550 million euros for the 2026-2028 period, up from 51 million euros in 2023-2025. Including mandatory programs, Poland’s total ESA budget for 2026-2028 will reach 731 million euros ($833 million), roughly a tenfold increase from the previous period.
Domanski also announced a new state-run investment fund worth over 500 million zloty (approximately $132 million) to invest in prospective space companies.
“The choice of Poland as the location for the new ESA Centre means that Poland now has exceptional potential for the development of space technologies,” Domanski said. “This is an expression of trust in Poland, its institutions, businesses and the scientific community.”
He added: “I have no doubt that the space industry will become another engine of the Polish economy in the coming decades.”
The decision follows a Letter of Intent signed between ESA and Poland during the agency’s Council at Ministerial Level in Bremen, Germany, in November 2025. A joint ESA-Polish task force subsequently defined the center’s objectives, scope, and implementation framework.
Poland’s space industry has been growing rapidly, with key domestic players such as Creotech Instruments (satellite manufacturing), Eycore (which launched Poland’s first synthetic aperture radar Earth observation satellite), and SatRev (international expansion including an Omani ground station). The government aims to double overall space sector expenditure in the coming years.
Tusk noted that ESA and Poland are also cooperating on the development of the country’s first sovereign spacecraft, a vehicle designed to service, refuel, and reposition satellites already in orbit, further signaling Poland’s ambitions in the sector.
The new center represents a strategic expansion of ESA’s institutional footprint beyond its traditional geographic base. For 51 years, major ESA facilities, including ESTEC in the Netherlands, ESOC in Germany, ESRIN in Italy, and the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, have remained within the 11 founding nations that signed the ESA convention in 1975. Poland’s selection breaks that pattern and positions Warsaw as a key node in Europe’s space security architecture.
“This is a very important day for Warsaw, for Poland, and for Polish ambitions,” Tusk declared. “The sky is NOT the limit.”
Featured image: Warsaw, Poland, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.