The state of Earth observation in 2026

A few years ago, in collaboration with Geoawesome, we ran a survey on Earth observation in 2024, and released the results as a free report. And last week, we released a follow-up report created from this year’s survey on the state of the industry in 2026. The survey ran for 5 weeks and gathered answers from 124 professionals. The full respondent breakdown can be found in the report.

Things looked different in January 2024. GeoAI is, obviously, a big part of it, but it’s not the whole story. We wanted to see what had changed the most, where the biggest advances were, and maybe what had moved slower than expected.

To celebrate the release of the 2026 report, Geoawesome hosted a digital event with speakers from UP42, Vantor, and Space4Good. You can watch the intro to the event below, and the panel discussion will be uploaded in the coming days.

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How do the results compare to the 2024 report?

The 2024 survey focused on how often companies relied on EO data. Since then, EO data usage has changed for many of our customers and for the industry as a whole: it’s considered “mission-critical” by 83% of respondents in 2026.

Another way usage has changed is in type: in 2024, optical was the most popular source, but not always. Now, optical is basically universal, while other data types like SAR and elevation are often used in conjunction with optical. Multi-sensor data usage is now the norm.

GeoAI, of course, is having a huge impact: 92% of companies are already using or planning to use AI in their workflows.

And, not to spoil the whole thing, but one more important point: the findings on the biggest pain for EO data users. It’s shifted from cost and data quality a few years ago to the buying process itself. Budget approval, unclear pricing, and licensing cause headaches for teams and companies.

Get your copy now

We decided to make the report free to download. Just fill in the form here to get your copy.

And if you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to us. Contact details can be found at the end of the report. We’d be happy to hear from you.

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