Russia's plan to advertise on rockets and spacecraft takes off

“According to the amendments, Roscosmos has been granted the right, effective January 1, 2026, to place advertising on space objects owned by both the State Corporation itself and federally,” the state-owned space corporation, Roscosmos, said. “The amendments will create a mechanism for attracting private investment in Russian space exploration and reduce the burden on the state budget.”

Raising small amounts so far

So Russia entered the brave new world of pervasive space advertising a few months ago. The Russian business newspaper Vedomosti reported that six large advertisements have been placed on Russian rockets in 2026. These include ads for PSB Bank, the Kofemaniya restaurant chain, the Russian Media Group, and the Russian Olympic Committee. The other two were public service announcements.

Will this help?

Like other segments of the Russian economy, Roscosmos has been subject to Western sanctions since the outbreak of the war against Ukraine. International partners, particularly the European Space Agency and commercial customers, stopped purchasing launches on Soyuz and Proton vehicles. According to some estimates, the sanctions cost Roscosmos $2.5 billion since the start of the war.

The new advertising won’t offset those losses in a meaningful way. Annual revenues from space advertising may only amount to a few million dollars per year, Russian news sources say.

A flagging launch rate

As with the overall economy, it’s difficult to get a true sense of the health of the Russian space program. But from the outside, there are some grim signs. For example, Russia recently extended its human spaceflight missions to the International Space Station from six to eight months to reduce the number of Soyuz rockets and spacecraft used by the program.

And the overall health of the Russian launch industry continues to decline. In both 2024 and 2025, the total number of Russian launches fell to 17 annually. Excluding 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is the lowest total number of annual launches in Russia since 1961, the year Yuri Gagarin launched into space.

At its height, in the early 1980s, Russia regularly launched 100 orbital rockets a year.