ATLAS CUP, described as the world’s first professional sport to operate in space, has announced that its inaugural championship will be staged in 2028.
Founded in late 2025, Atlas Cup is a professional sports media property centred on uncrewed spacecraft competing in orbital races. Drawing inspiration from established racing formats such as the America’s Cup and Formula One, the competition introduces the concept of “orbital sport” to a global audience.
The launch of Atlas Cup comes at a time of significant structural change within the commercial space sector. Much like the early evolution of the automotive industry, the rapid growth of the new space economy presents vast opportunities but is also marked by a fragmented and largely unproven supplier ecosystem, with limited objective performance benchmarks. According to the media release, Atlas Cup aims to address this gap by using direct competition as both a sporting spectacle and a performance-testing platform, generating a comprehensive dataset on spacecraft systems and components.
Positioned at the intersection of sport, technology, and media, Atlas Cup seeks to celebrate innovation within the space economy while delivering content built specifically for social, mobile, and streaming platforms, aligning with the consumption habits of modern audiences.
Atlas Cup CEO Philip Hover-Smoot said, “Atlas Cup will do for the space industry what professional racing did for the automotive industry. It’s time for space to be a source of inspiration again, and Atlas Cup is engineered to capture the extraordinary potential of space and deliver it to audiences across the world.”
“How do you know your system is the best? You win, in orbit. Head-to-head racing in space has never been done before. But when we combine the epic visuals of space with the magic of racing, we’re going to get something truly special,” Hover-Smoot added.
