By: Adnan Hiroli, AG Media Partner – DroneX
Europe has entered a decisive moment, when it comes to integrating uncrewed aircraft into shared airspace. After years of frameworks, consultations and tightly controlled pilot projects, 2026 will determine which countries and which operators actually reach commercial scale. U-Space, Europe’s model for digitised low-altitude air traffic services, paired with the push for routine BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations will drive this success.
On paper, the route forward has never been clearer. In practice, operators still face a fragmented regulatory landscape, divergent national interpretations and persistent technological and procedural hurdles. This year will distinguish those capable of attaining repeatable operations from those stuck in bespoke, one-off missions.
U-Space in Europe: From Regulatory Text to Real-World Deployment
U-Space is Europe’s chosen mechanism for enabling large-scale drone integration in low-altitude airspace. (See prior AG coverage of U-Space). It aims to create a digitised, largely automated environment where multiple uncrewed aircraft can operate safely alongside crewed aviation. To do that, it brings together a suite of key services: network identification of aircraft, systematic traffic information, both strategic and tactical deconfliction, digital flight authorisation, secure data exchange and continuous operational monitoring that allows authorities and operators to maintain a live picture of activity.
Despite this mature regulatory framework being in force since 2023, only a small number of U-Space airspaces have actually been designated so far. Many states still wrestle with practical questions relating to how to define U-Space volumes, how to select and oversee U-Space Service Providers (USSPs) and how to build and fund the underpinning digital infrastructure. This lag between the existence of rules and the presence of real, usable U-Space airspace has presented a major bottleneck.
As a result, a patchwork has formed across the continent. Some states have progressed quickly, often linked to logistics corridors, strategic infrastructure projects, or national digitalisation programmes. Others remain cautious and prefer tightly controlled testbeds and sandboxes over full designations. For commercial operators, this means that BVLOS operations may be relatively straightforward in one jurisdiction yet remain highly exceptional, and administratively exhausting, just across the border.
BVLOS Operations in Europe: Turning One-Off Missions into a Viable Business
If U-Space provides the framework, BVLOS forms the business model. Routine, repeatable BVLOS operations will make the economics of drone services work. They are particularly vital in sectors where manned inspection or response is slow, dangerous, or expensive, such as utilities and energy networks, telecoms infrastructure, offshore assets, rail and road inspection, public safety missions, environmental monitoring, logistics and last‑mile delivery.
However, the path to routine BVLOS in Europe continues to be constrained by four persistent, operationally grounded challenges, discussed below.
Detect-and-Avoid (DAA): National authorities expect operators to demonstrate robust DAA capabilities, whether through onboard sensors, cooperative surveillance or monitored airspace solutions. Certified systems remain limited. Proving performance in complex environments remains a daunting task.
Complexity and Workload of the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA): While the SORA offers a structured framework, it demands extensive preparation, documentation and risk‑mitigation planning. Many operators underestimate the volume of evidence, iterations,and scenario analysis needed to secure approvals, especially for scalable, multi-site use cases.
Command-and-Control (C2) Link Reliability: Authorities and enterprise customers want to see resilient architectures with robust links, redundancy strategies and clear spectrum management. Loss-of-link procedures must be defined and thoroughly validated, including automatic contingencies such as safe loiter, route reversion or auto‑return behaviours that are proven in both testing and real operations.
Insurance and Liability Considerations: Insurers increasingly require evidence-based operational procedures, proven track records and transparent, documented risk mitigations before offering comprehensive BVLOS cover at commercially acceptable terms. Without that, even technically capable operations can be stalled by the inability to close contracts or meet corporate risk policies.
Taken together, these factors underscore that the biggest obstacles to BVLOS at scale are no longer primarily about “what the rules say,” but about the volume and quality of operational evidence that regulators and insurers need before granting lasting trust.
Key Market Forces Shaping U-Space and BVLOS Through 2026
The following three reinforcing forces that connect regulators, technology providers and enterprise buyers will drive Europe’s trajectory over the next 24 months.
Collision Between Regulatory Pressure and Industrial Demand: Authorities struggle to keep up with the volume of SORA submissions and authorisation requests from energy companies, telecoms providers, infrastructure managers and drone operators. In this environment, countries that publish clear, standardised guidance and develop streamlined pathways to approval will see more commercial activity gravitate toward them. Operators have already started tracking which jurisdictions have become “BVLOS friendly” in practice, not just in policy documents.
Rise of Digital Air Traffic Integration as a Basic Requirement: As U-Space deployments increase, integration with digital traffic and airspace systems will become essential, rather than optional. Operators investing early in U-Space‑compatible capabilities (think: remote identification, live telemetry integration with service providers and automated network data exchange) will benefit from smoother approvals and lower long‑term friction. This will hold especially true when operating across several regions or supporting multi‑country enterprise contracts.
Changing Expectations from Enterprise Buyers: Large organisations continue to move beyond pilots and proofs of concept. They now expect structured workflows, predictable cost models, direct integration of drone data into existing asset management or analytics systems and repeatable operations that can be cloned across many sites. These commercial expectations shape the market as much as regulators do. They also reward operators who behave like long‑term partners, rather than project-based vendors.
BVLOS Readiness for Drone Operators: From Checklists to Culture
Against this backdrop, BVLOS readiness increasingly depends on building a reusable, scalable system rather than treating each mission as a custom exercise. Operators that assemble complete, reusable SORA packages can accelerate new approvals and create internal templates that cut their time-to-market when entering a new geography, sector, or customer account. This involves developing standard threat scenarios and mitigations as well as documenting flight safety data.
Similarly, DAA tools and procedures must be validated and backed by evidence. This includes flight logs that show consistent performance, simulation outputs that cover edge cases and documented safety outcomes that can be shared with authorities and insurers. Operators need to treat C2 resilience as an operational backbone, with clearly defined fallback procedures, robust lost-link protocols, carefully configured auto-return or contingency behaviours and network redundancy plans that are trained, drilled and refined over time. To make this concrete, operators should, at a minimum, build a BVLOS readiness checklist that includes:
- Complete, reusable SORA packages, including risk scenarios, mitigations and supporting evidence.
- Validated DAA tools and procedures, backed by flight logs, simulations and safety performance data.
- C2 resilience planning, with documented lost-link protocols, auto-return behaviours and network redundancy strategies.
- Standardised internal workflows covering training, documentation, operational checklists and performance monitoring.
- Early, structured engagement with insurance providers, supported by detailed documentation of processes and safety record.
- Integration with digital airspace and U-Space services, ensuring compatibility with remote ID, telemetry exchange and networked traffic information.
Early, proactive work on these elements turns BVLOS from an occasional achievement into a repeatable capability. It also positions operators to respond quickly as U-Space designations expand and regulators favour partners who can prove that safety and scalability are built into their operations from day one.
Commercial Leaders in European Drone Operations
Not every company will benefit equally from the maturation of U-Space and BVLOS. The operators best positioned to lead the next phase are those that can operate across borders, serve demanding sectors such as energy and telecoms and manage high volumes of repeat inspections or service missions. These are the environments where scale, standardisation and digital integration will generate the most value.
Fleet standardisation, across platforms, payloads, and software stacks, helps turn operations into a replicable product rather than a sequence of bespoke projects. Operators that partner closely with technology suppliers to prove reliability, whether in autonomy, navigation, DAA, C2 infrastructure or data handling, will have stronger stories to tell regulators, insurers and enterprise customers.
A consolidation wave will likely result over the next two years. Smaller operators that cannot meet the technical, regulatory and documentation requirements for BVLOS may find themselves merging into larger organisations or exiting the market. Meanwhile, better-capitalised and better‑prepared players will be in a position to secure multi‑year enterprise contracts that lock in their role as strategic partners in infrastructure inspection, logistics and public service delivery.
Drone Industry Events and DroneX: Catalysts for Scaling U-Space and BVLOS
As Europe’s drone ecosystem moves from experimentation to execution, operators need more than online guidance and bilateral meetings with regulators. They need clear procurement pathways, reliable technology benchmarking and direct access to the decision‑makers who shape budgets, risk appetites and long‑term strategies. This is why ecosystem events, which have evolved from generic conferences into practical scaling platforms, provide significant value.
Events such as DroneX bring together the full spectrum of stakeholders involved in U-Space and BVLOS: U-Space service providers, digital airspace companies, autonomy and DAA vendors, infrastructure owners and enterprise buyers, municipal authorities and national regulators. In one venue, operators can see U-Space deployments and BVLOS operations in practice, compare digital airspace tools and autonomy platforms and examine how different players structure operational workflows for repeatability.
Crucially, these gatherings also offer direct engagement with regulators, municipal stakeholders and enterprise buyers who are actively shaping Europe’s next commercial cycle. Networking with technology providers can lead to partnerships that fill key gaps in an operator’s stack, from communications resilience to data integration. For companies planning significant operations in 2026, DroneX is less a “nice‑to‑attend” show and more an essential forum for gaining practical insight, aligning operational models with emerging expectations and forming the partnerships that will define Europe’s next phase of uncrewed air system adoption.
Learn more about DroneX by contacting Adnan’s team here.