ESA Backs SWISSto12’s HummingSat with €73m
European Space Agency member states have committed €73 million to support SWISSto12’s HummingSat programme.
The funding was approved under ESA’s ARTES HummingSat Partnership Project at the November 2025 ministerial council, with backing from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway and associate member Canada. Combined with private investment secured in the second half of 2025, SWISSto12 says total funding for the programme now exceeds €100 million.
HummingSat is designed to offer flexible, cost-efficient and sovereign communications capacity, targeting both commercial and government customers. The first satellite launch is scheduled for 2027 for SES, with Viasat to follow.
The platform claims to be significantly smaller and cheaper than traditional geostationary satellites and is built around software-defined, reconfigurable payloads. The new funding will also support further development of SWISSto12’s phased-array antenna technologies for LEO, MEO and GEO missions, as well as ground terminals.
ESA and SWISSto12 position HummingSat as a response to rising global demand for agile satellite capacity, spanning broadband connectivity, secure sovereign communications, mobility, IoT and services for remote regions.