Planet Wins German Satellite Services Tender Worth Up to €25 Million

Planet Labs Germany announced on 15. september 2026, that it has been awarded a Satellite Services tender by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). The tender award includes options and carries a maximum possible value of 25 million euros (€25 million) over five years.

Planet said the milestone makes Germany the first civil government globally to acquire the company’s dedicated Constellation Services, and the company characterized the procurement as setting a new precedent for public-sector space procurement. The agreement provides Germany with dedicated very high-resolution satellite tasking capabilities and a European-hosted data platform for Earth observation.

Contract Scope and Platform

Under the agreement, the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) will coordinate and distribute high-resolution tasked imagery, nationwide Planet Mosaics, and advanced geospatial analytics to serve German civil government authorities. In addition to providing exclusive dedicated satellite tasking capabilities, Planet will deliver a cloud-native Software-as-a-Service and platform solution deployed on European cloud infrastructure. Planet said the architecture establishes a secure, European-hosted environment that further develops compliance with European data privacy regulations and information security standards.

“By securing exclusive access to dedicated satellite tasking for the first time at the federal civil level, Germany is taking a decisive step toward establishing future-ready space capabilities,” said Prof. Dr. Steffen Schön, president of BKG. He said the long-standing partnership with Planet has proven that combining commercial agility with public sector requirements yields extraordinary results, and that expanding the collaboration on European platform architectures ensures all German federal civil authorities can draw on excellent capabilities to make fast, informed decisions.

Martin Polak, Managing Director of Planet Labs Germany, said, “Germany is pioneering a new model for sovereign public space infrastructure.” He said Planet, as an active, locally rooted member of the German space ecosystem, will provide the high-resolution imaging, advanced analytics and sovereign platform infrastructure needed to empower government agencies across the country.

Marcus Apel, Director of Business Development of Planet Labs Germany, attributed the company’s position to more than 10 years of Planet’s growth in Germany and five years of deep collaboration with BKG, describing a partnership built on mutual trust, close attention to the customer’s operational requirements, and consistent delivery.

Existing Relationship and Prior Contracts

The award builds on Planet’s relationship with BKG dating back to 2021, under which the company’s satellite data supports more than 400 federal institutions in Germany. Planet said the new agreement establishes a unified layer of ground truth for decision-makers across urban planning, forest and water monitoring, and agricultural and land-use assessments.

On 6. mai 2025, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community and BKG signed a seven-figure contract with Planet carrying a one-year term and an option to renew for two more years. That deal included a fixed rate for all of Planet’s data products over Germany, including insights from Planetary Variables, water monitoring services from Planet’s partner EOMAP, and access to the Planet Insights Platform. Planet said the data would inform use cases including monitoring of water, forests, agriculture, socio-economics and land use, and would support federal monitoring campaigns and environmental assessments.

Planet’s partnership with the German government began in november 2021. Since then, employees of all federal institutions have had direct access to Planet insights, enabling them to streamline workflows and reduce expenses, with users comprising all German federal government entities and select federal state entities. Julia Kluge, Section Head of the Federal Service Point of Remote Sensing at BKG, said when the 2025 contract was announced that Planet’s near-daily data informs ministries across the German government, including the Ministry of the Interior and Community and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and that centralizing the data within one institution increases resource-sharing and reduces costs while giving all agencies access to daily insights. Polak said at the time that Germany’s diverse topography, spanning agricultural land, forests, rivers and mountains, made Planet’s broad-area monitoring capabilities valuable for understanding daily changes.

Berlin Operations

Berlin has served as Planet’s European headquarters for over a decade. Planet said that later this fall the headquarters will move into a new space campus designed to unify satellite manufacturing, engineering, mission operations, data processing, AI analytics and broader business operations under one roof. The company said the expansion brings new highly skilled jobs to Berlin and significantly increases capacity to build advanced satellite systems at scale in Germany.

Planet said the tender award does not change the financial guidance for the current fiscal year that its management provided on 3. september 2026.