The Global UTM Association’s (GUTMA) annual report for 2025/2026 reports on the divergent progress being made around the world to introduce UAS traffic management (UTM) systems.
“2025 was widely expected to become the year of implementation for the global drone ecosystem,” it says. “The regulatory foundations were largely in place, technologies had matured, and the ambition was clear: move from experimentation to scale. Still, the geopolitical context has changed the terms of the debate….Progress has been real, but uneven.”
It notes in the United States, BVLOS operations have continued to expand and China is accelerating large-scale deployment, while Australia and Japan continue to advance frameworks enabling routine BVLOS operations.
Source:GUTMA
“In other regions, however, the transition from framework to implementation remains slower. Even where comprehensive regulatory systems exist, scalable operations are still limited, and digital traffic management services have yet to unlock functioning markets,” said the report.
In 2026, GUTMA’s new Task Force will coordinate member engagement in key EASA consultation mechanisms shaping the future implementation of U‐space Regulation (EU) 2021/664 and geo‐zones,” said the report. “Building on GUTMA’s role as co‐lead of the U‐space
Activity Group within EASA’s Drone Consultation Steering Group (D‐CSTG), the Task Force will support member participation in EASA’s Regulatory Management Task RMT.0748 on the review of U‐space AMC and GM, facilitate contributions to EASA’s geo‐zones work, and ensure a consolidated industry voice across broader D‐CSTG activities.”
The report highlighted the work undertaken by various work groups to progress the integration of UTM networks into the airspace management networks of countries around the world.
The GUTMA EU Coordination Task Force developed a strategic set of recommendations for the European Commission and EASA to accelerate and scale U-space implementation across the European Union. A subset of actions was identified as “Quick Wins”, highlighting pragmatic, near‐term measures through which the European Commission and EASA can provide targeted support to enable faster and more consistent implementation at Member State level. GUTMA continued to play a central role in supporting EASA’s engagement with the drone and U-space
ecosystem, notably through its active contribution to the Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) Implementation Forum and contributes to the European Commission’s Informal Drone Experts Group, a consultation forum bringing together key industry associations and stakeholders to support EU policy development in drones and advanced air mobility.
Under the leadership of Zipline, the GUTMA US BVLOS Task Force produced a position paper by collecting and synthesizing perspectives from GUTMA members on areas of support and concern within the FAA’s approach. In September 2025, the GUTMA Task Force submitted
an official comment to the FAA, including: detailed summary of FAA’s proposed rules on BVLOS operations (Part 108) and Automated Data Service Providers (Part 146); technical and policy analysis of cross-jurisdictional compatibility; and recommendations for alignment or clarification.
The Aerial Connectivity Joint Activity (ACJA), a joint initiative of the GSMA and GUTMA designed to promote structured dialogue and mutual understanding between the aviation and mobile communications sectors, has worked on coordinating cellular standardisation with 3GPP to ensure that aviation-related requirements are properly considered throughout the 3GPP process; defining the interfaces and mechanisms for data exchange between mobile network operators and the UTM ecosystem; and developing minimum operational performance specifications (MOPS) and minimum aviation system performance standards (MASPS) by documenting the performance and behaviour of cellular networks in aviation terms.
The association has also contributed to standards body work to implement technical standards for UTM globally, contributing to ISO, EUROCAE, ASTM International and EUSGC – EU.Within the ICAO Advanced Air Mobility Study Group (AAM SG) GUTMA acts as a bridge between
traditional aviation stakeholders and the evolving UTM and digital aviation ecosystem, ensuring that operational and system-level perspectives from UTM stakeholders are reflected in ICAO discussions.
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