PARIS
President Emmanuel Macron will host an International Space Summit on Sept. 9 and 10 at the Grand Palais, building on a November 2025 announcement of France's national space strategy.
Macron has invited a broad range of international participants and plans major announcements. He is modeling the gathering on a previous international artificial intelligence summit he hosted.
The French President is emphasizing scientific research and civilian space applications at a moment when governments worldwide are pivoting defense budgets toward military spending, driven partly by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
"Common challenges, a shared ambition, science shared," Macron said on social media.
General Philippe Adam, former commander of France's space command, is overseeing the summit's organization for the Élysée Palace in coordination with the Ministry of Higher Education and Space and the French space agency CNES.
Macron intends to use the summit to broker international agreements on space utilization, particularly to address the explosion of megaconstellation deployments that are clogging orbital capacity and creating frequency congestion.
He plans to propose a declaration advocating for equitable frequency sharing among nations and operators. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to attend.
The French aerospace industry group GIFAS views the summit as a major commercial opportunity. French industrial firms are also pressing for 60 billion euros from the next European space program budget.
The event is one of several major space gatherings Paris is hosting in September. The World Space Business Week, organized by Novespace, runs Sept. 15-19, followed by the Toulouse Space Forum, organized by La Tribune, in Toulouse.
