The Artemis Accords grew from eight signatories in 2020 to 78 nations in 2026: the count by year

The Artemis Accords, a set of principles for civil exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond, were adopted on October 13, 2020, and signed that day by eight nations: Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. NASA's list of signatories by date, as fetched on November 13, 2026, now counts 78 nations, the most recent being Vietnam on October 28, 2026. The table below, built from that list, shows how the group grew year by year.

What signatories commit to

The accords describe themselves as a political commitment to their principles, many of which put obligations from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and related agreements into practice. They apply to civil space activities run by each signatory's civil space agency, on the Moon, Mars, comets and asteroids, in orbit around the Moon or Mars, at the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points and in transit between them. NASA launched them with the State Department to advance its Artemis lunar program.

The text has sections on peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, registration of space objects, release of scientific data, preserving outer space heritage, space resources, deconfliction of activities and orbital debris. Two sections set out positions in more detail. On resources, signatories affirm that extracting space resources does not in itself amount to national appropriation under Article II of the Outer Space Treaty. On deconfliction, they agree to notify and coordinate within “safety zones”, areas where normal operations or an anomaly could reasonably cause harmful interference, which are meant to be temporary and to end when an operation stops.

Signatories by year

What the count shows

Growth has come in bursts, by our reading of NASA's list. After the founding eight and Ukraine in 2020, five nations joined in 2021, nine in 2022 and ten in 2023. In 2024 the count jumped by 19, from 33 to 52, with nine signings in the last three months of the year alone. Only seven nations joined in 2025, three of them between October 22 and 27. In 2026, 19 have signed so far, 10 of them since mid-July.

NASA marked passing 75 signatories on September 28, 2026, when it said 76 countries took part. “Nearly one-third of all signatories have joined since the start of President Trump's second term,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said then. By our count from the list, 26 of the 78 signed on or after January 21, 2025, the date Finland joined. NASA also said that nearly 40% of the world's nations are now collaborating with it on this approach to exploration and that nearly two-thirds of the countries that signed the Outer Space Treaty have also signed the accords. China and Russia do not appear on NASA's list.

How the group works now

NASA says the group, loosely organized at first, has worked since 2024 under a set of rules called the Signatories Group Method of Operations. It meets twice a year, at a technical workshop and at a principals' meeting during the International Astronautical Congress, with virtual sessions in between. This year's principals' meeting, at the congress in Antalya, Türkiye, from October 5, was to be co-chaired by NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson and the director of Peru's space agency, CONIDA, and was set to discuss support for emerging space nations and recommendations on lunar debris mitigation. With its Moon Base, NASA says it has invited every signatory to take part in the return to the Moon through science payloads, technology demonstrations and CubeSats; our report on NASA's path to a 2028 Moon landing covers that program's timeline.

The newest signatory, Vietnam, signed through its Minister of Science and Technology, Vũ Hải Quân, during Vietnam International Digital Week in Ha Long, NASA said. Any state may still join after the 2020 adoption under the accords' final provisions, and NASA says it expects more nations to sign in the months and years ahead.