Germany has broken ground on a GOVSATCOM Hub facility in Cologne, with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia committing to investing up to €50 million in the project.
The European Union’s GOVSATCOM system officially became operational in January 2026 and is designed to provide sovereign, reliable, secure, and cost-effective satellite communications services for European government and military users.
At the heart of GOVSATCOM is the GOVSATCOM Hub, a secure platform that connects government users with pooled satellite communications capacity. While GOVSATCOM is already operational, pooling capacity from eight existing satellites provided by five countries, two dedicated physical sites are being constructed “in order to mitigate risks to service continuity.”
In December 2024, the European Commission adopted an implementing decision designating Cologne, Germany, and Agios Ioannis, Greece, as the locations of GOVSATCOM Hubs. A third location in Italy had been considered, but the country ultimately withdrew its proposal.
On 16 June 2026, the German aerospace agency DLR announced that construction had begun on its GOVSATCOM Hub site, which will be located on the grounds of the agency’s Cologne facility. According to the government of North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which Cologne is located, the project is being funded by both the state and federal government. While it did not disclose the federal government’s contribution, it said North Rhine-Westphalia would invest up to €50 million in the project.
In addition to providing European governments with an early sovereign alternative to systems like Starlink, whose role in Ukraine underscored the strategic risk of relying on a US-controlled system, GOVSATCOM also serves as a precursor to the planned IRIS2 constellation.
The constellation is expected to include roughly 300 dedicated satellites, which will enable a system that EU Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius described as “better than Starlink.” Germany, however, appears to be unsatisfied with relying solely on a shared resource.
On 25 September 2025, during an address at the 3rd BDI Space Congress, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Germany would invest €35 billion in space-based defence by 2030. The announcement included plans to “acquire new satellite constellations for early warning, reconnaissance, and communications.”
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