Space Tourism in 2026: Who Still Sells Seats — and Who Is Flying

Zero. The number of paying passengers carried to space in 2026 by the two companies that built the category.

Blue Origin flew New Shepard NS-38 on 22 January 2026 — the 38th mission of the programme, and the 98th person it has sent past the Kármán line. Eight days later the company paused human flights for at least two years. Virgin Galactic stopped flying in June 2024 and retired VSS Unity. On 12 August 2026 it told investors that the first Delta-class commercial flight moves from the fourth quarter of 2026 to February 2027.

Seats are still for sale. Prices run from about $210,000 for a Chinese suborbital reservation to $750,000 at Virgin Galactic. One orbital seat, at roughly $55 million, is the only flight a buyer can book outright this year.

What a seat costs when nobody is flying

The category had one price anchor for years: none. Blue Origin never published a New Shepard fare, so the working range came from reported per-seat figures across the flights it actually ran — roughly $150,000 to $450,000. Virgin Galactic quoted $450,000 through the SpaceShipTwo years and $600,000 before the pause.

2026 is the first full year in which both suborbital operators are selling seats to flights they are not flying. Prices have not fallen in response. They have split into three tiers: suborbital from a manufacturer in China, suborbital from the two incumbents, and orbital.

Reported per-seat figures compiled from operator statements, company filings and specialist trackers, 2026

The spread is 260 to one. A seat on the ISS costs about the price of a mid-size corporate jet, while the cheapest ticket on the board has never flown a paying passenger.

One number explains why the ladder looks stable. The first New Shepard seat ever sold went for $28 million at a charity auction in 2021, and nobody treats that as the market price. Prices in this sector are announcements, not clearing prices — there is no secondary market, no refund curve, no observable trade.

Why New Shepard is parked until at least 2028

NS-38 lifted off from West Texas on 22 January 2026 and carried six passengers. Across 38 missions since December 2021 the programme has put 98 people above the Kármán line — the deepest passenger record in the category, and most of the flight evidence anyone has for suborbital demand.

On 30 January, Blue Origin announced a pause of at least two years. The stated reason was allocation: resources move to the Blue Moon lunar lander built for NASA's Artemis programme. Human flights resume, in the company's own framing, when the lander work allows.

That decision removed the category's price anchor. New Shepard was the only vehicle with a long flight record and an open, if unpublished, price range. With it grounded through at least 2028, the two most recognisable brands in space tourism share one status: dormant.

The queue is not only on the buyer side. Blue Origin has not said what New Shepard tickets will cost when it returns, and a two-year pause is long enough for a fare to be repriced against a market that has had no suborbital flights at all.

Delta, February 2027, and the queue behind it

Virgin Galactic is the counter-case. It has not flown a paying customer since 2024, it retired the vehicle that flew them, and it is selling anyway.

The company reopened reservations in 2026 at $750,000 per seat and released about 50 flights at that price. On the August earnings call, chief executive Michael Colglazier described the result:

Our tranche of spaceflight expeditions priced at $750,000 was oversubscribed and booked out ahead of schedule, demonstrating strong demand from a wide range of customers. We expect to release a new tranche of spaceflight expeditions at higher price points this fall.— Michael Colglazier, CEO, Virgin Galactic, Q2 2026 results, 12 August 2026

Two facts sit inside that sentence. Demand cleared a $750,000 price for a vehicle that has never carried a passenger. And the next tranche prices higher, which means the published fare is a floor rather than a ceiling.

The schedule moved the same day. First Delta-class commercial service went from the fourth quarter of 2026 to February 2027, with avionics and systems installation cited as the reason. The flight-test phase opens in October 2026 with a captive-carry mission, and a second spaceship is planned to join the fleet in March 2027.

Hardware work has been visible since spring. VSS Unity returned to the air on 27 May 2026 for glide flights that train pilots and ground crews ahead of the new vehicle's operations.

Unity's glide characteristics and energy-management profile provide an outstanding real-world proxy for our new Spaceship.— Mike Moses, President, Virgin Galactic, 27 May 2026

The first Delta ship moved from the assembly hangar to a test-and-launch hangar near Phoenix during the first quarter, completed structural assembly by the end of March, and entered production acceptance testing in May. A systems integration facility in Southern California runs subsystem tests on an Iron Bird bench before the ship travels to Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Behind the sale sits roughly 650 legacy reservation holders from the 2010s and early 2020s, many of whom paid $200,000 to $450,000. They are receiving flight windows from January 2027 into the first half of 2028. New buyers at $750,000 queue behind them.

Sales are paused while the new customers are onboarded. The company told investors that the fall tranche closes during the glide-flight programme, and that the pause is a sequencing decision rather than a softening of demand.

February 2027 is a stated target. The programme has slipped repeatedly — from 2025 to 2026, then from the fourth quarter of 2026 — and specialist trackers treat the date as a company plan rather than a confirmed one. As we wrote in October, the same pattern of a milestone granted ahead of the fixes that de-risk it runs through commercial crew as well.

The operating case is arithmetic rather than sentiment. Delta is designed for twice-weekly flights, up to eight missions a month and more than 500 missions per vehicle, against six commercial flights across 2023 and 2024 from the whole previous fleet. Whether the schedule holds is the question every number in the tranche depends on.

The only seat you can buy flies to orbit

Suborbital tourism promised frequency and delivered a waiting room. Orbital tourism promised nothing about frequency and delivers a manifest: private missions to the ISS on SpaceX hardware, priced around $55 million per seat.

That price is 73 times the Virgin Galactic fare and it is the one line in the table with a flight attached. Balloons occupy the cheap end without the altitude — Space Perspective is rebooting under new ownership and has not flown paying passengers, and its last reported fare, near $125,000, still has no flight attached.

Chinese supplier Deep Blue Aerospace is the only new entrant with tickets on the board, sold in a 2024 livestream event at about ¥1.5 million each, close to $210,000 — less than a third of Virgin Galactic's price and almost a fifth of what Blue Origin seats have been reported at.

Read across the row and the market is doing something unusual: it is pricing future flights against each other while no suborbital vehicle carries anyone.

What settles the question this fall

Three dates carry the next revision of these prices.

The first is October 2026, when Virgin Galactic starts the flight-test phase with a captive-carry mission. It is the first integration test of spaceship, carrier aircraft, ground organisation and installed systems, and the first evidence that February 2027 is a schedule rather than a statement.

The second is the fall tranche itself: its price point and seat count. An oversubscribed $750,000 round followed by a higher one tells you where the demand curve sits; a quiet release tells you something else.

The third is Blue Origin's language around 2028. A pause restated is a schedule; a pause with a date attached is a plan.