Albania to be 73rd Artemis Accords signatory on Sept. 21

Albania is due to sign the Artemis Accords at a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington at 12 p.m. EDT on Monday, 21 September 2026, becoming the 73rd country to put its name to the agreement. NASA set out the plan in media advisory M26-070, issued on 18 September by the agency's newsroom.

NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Albania's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ferit Hoxha, and the Republic of Albania's Ambassador to the United States, Ervin Bushati, together with officials from the U.S. Department of State. The agency says the event is in person only, with media asked to RSVP by 10 a.m. on the day.

The timing is what makes the number striking. NASA's own "List of the Signatories by Date" shows Türkiye signed as the 71st country on 31 August 2026 and Djibouti as the 72nd on 14 September 2026. If Monday's ceremony goes ahead as scheduled, three countries will have joined in three weeks, and Albania will be the 14th to sign in 2026 alone. The accords started with eight founding signatories — Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States — on 13 October 2020.

NASA describes the accords as a common set of principles for the civil exploration and use of outer space, drawn up with the U.S. Department of State as governments and private companies increased their activity around the Moon. The agency lists peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperability of systems, emergency assistance to astronauts in distress and the registration of space objects among the commitments, and says the text reinforces existing obligations under the Outer Space Treaty, the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement.

What the accords are not is a mission or a place on one. The Albanian outlet Exit, which reported the signing on 20 September, stresses that they are a political commitment to shared rules rather than a guarantee of participation in NASA programmes. Albania's own space footprint is modest: Exit reports that the government signed a $6 million agreement in 2022 for priority access to two Earth-observation satellites, Albania-1 and Albania-2, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January 2023 and intended to help monitor illegal construction, logging and cannabis cultivation.

NASA's advisory names no project, budget or follow-up activity tied to the signing, and the agency has not said which country is next in line. As Exit put it, the practical value of Monday's signature will depend on whether Albania builds scientific, technical and institutional cooperation on top of it.