An analysis of publicly available reports by Euronews’ fact-checking unit, The Cube, found that drone-related disruptions at European airports have exploded over the past year, quadrupling between January 2024 and November 2025.
The review, which covered more than 24 airports across 12 countries, shows a clear turning point: whilst incidents were reported sporadically in 2024 and early 2025, reports spiked suddenly in September, reaching their highest levels the following month.
Belgium was the most affected country, reporting 10 incidents that disrupted operations at its airports that could be tied to drones buzzing overhead.
All of these incidents happened within just eight days, between 2 and 9 November, an unprecedented one-week cluster of drone-related disruptions that brought Brussels Airport to a standstill and led to dozens of flight cancellations.
Official data points to a wider picture of slowly increasing drone activity. Germany’s air navigation service provider, DFS, recorded 192 drone-related airport disturbances in 2025, up from 141 the year before.
Sweden’s LFV also confirmed five cases between 2024 and 2025 where air traffic was halted or delayed due to drones.
More common, and more disruptive
Drones flying near European airports are not a new phenomenon, air traffic data shows. However, while sightings have increased gradually over recent years, the nature of the incidents has also changed — becoming more disruptive and likely to shutter airports for hours at a time.
Data from the Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority provided to The Cube shows that air traffic controllers reported 107 illegal drone flights near Danish airports in 2025, up from 92 in 2024.
Yet, only a handful of these were recorded in the media and online as having a substantial impact on air traffic. In December 2024, the Copenhagen Police reported a single, brief incident at Copenhagen Airport — a drone sighting had caused a 10-minute interruption and no flight cancellations.
But by 2025, the situation changed dramatically. Between 22-23 September 2025, drone sightings over Copenhagen airport caused a four-hour suspension of flights, at least 109 cancellations and 51 redirections.
Simultaneously, an alleged drone disrupted air traffic at nearby Oslo Airport in Norway, with the combined disruption impacting more than 20,000 passengers — the single largest disruption at an airport linked to drones in the whole of 2025 thus far.
Just one day later, drones were spotted at Aalborg, an airport that shares a runway with the Danish Air Force, with authorities confirming hours-long delays and diversions.
Further drones were recorded by witnesses at Sønderborg, Esbjerg and Skrydstrup, a military base.
This pattern isn’t unique to Denmark. In 2025, Germany, Sweden and Belgium all saw a surge in media reports depicting airport closures for several hours and notable disruption to air traffic, compared to sporadic or minor interruptions in 2024.
Experts say the rise of cheap, easily accessible drones for hobbyists has coincided with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which has accelerated advances in drone technology.
The exact causes and perpetrators behind many of these airport disruptions, however, remain in many cases under investigation.
However, other analysts told The Cube that many of these disruptions bear the hallmarks of Moscow’s hybrid warfare, designed to unsettle populations and fall into a grey area short of fully-fledged military confrontation.
Who’s behind the drones?
The number of reports on drone-related airport closures increased after around 23 drones entered Polish airspace on 9 September this year, forcing four airports in the country to close in a major incident.
Polish authorities directly blamed Russia. In October, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told The Guardian that the drones appeared to be launched from a single location and were unarmed — implying it was a deliberate provocation, rather than an accidental offshoot of a Russian strike on neighbouring Ukraine.
In November, Polish general Maciej Klisz told outlet Rzeczpospolita that an investigation confirmed several of the drones carried explosive charges, including several decoys, deployed to overload air defence systems.
Elsewhere, the link is less clear. A police investigation into the incident in September at Oslo Airport was ultimately dismissed. Norwegian police said they had conducted a probe, which ultimately was “unable to confirm or deny whether the drones were actually observed on the night of September 23”.
In Germany, police launched a large-scale operation around Munich Airport after several drone sightings suspended flights multiple times in early October, but could not immediately find a perpetrator.
A separate incident in early November suspended flights at Berlin Airport for nearly two hours, with police saying they could not immediately locate the drone, which was spotted by a witness.
Still, several European leaders have openly suggested Russian involvement. In the aftermath of the incident which shuttered Copenhagen airport in September, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen pointedly said that Russian involvement “could not be ruled out”, linking it to the incursion over Poland and another incident over Romanian airspace.
“It appeared to be a capable actor,” Danish police inspector Jens Jespersen said of the incident, noting that the drone turned its lights on and off as it approached the airport. It was operated by someone who had the “will and tools to show off… perhaps also to practice”.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, when commenting on the spate of drone sightings in early October, said that whilst there wasn’t an incident involving an “armed drone” so far, Germany’s suspicion is “that Russia is behind most of these drone flights”. He called them “espionage attempts” aimed at “unsettling the population”.
In Belgium, Defence Minister Theo Francken said of the near-daily incursions between 2 and 9 November that “the threat was serious” and that the pattern “matched the hybrid techniques seen in other countries”.
His spokesperson told The Cube that Russian involvement was “plausible”, but all scenarios were being considered.
Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement. When asked about the drone disturbances during a public appearance in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin laughed off the claims.
“I won’t send any more [drones],” Putin joked. “Not to France, not to Denmark, and not to Copenhagen.”
Drones are ‘sophisticated’
While authorities in Europe have launched investigations into most of the incidents, very few have led to the identification of suspects. Part of this, experts say, is down to limits in technology.
“Many of the drones used are so small and light that a standard radar is not configured to detect them,” said Dr David Bacci, a senior research assistant in thermofluids dynamics and acoustics at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute.
New surveillance tools, such as high-resolution thermal imaging and acoustic sensors, are being tested, Bacci told The Cube, but “we are really in that grey area where the problem is growing faster than the solutions are deployed”.
He added that it is difficult to track the person responsible for controlling the drones, who could be operating outside or several kilometres away from the airport’s perimeter.
“It’s not that easy to retrace everything to Russia,” he said.
While some incidents could involve people “financed from Russia or simply Russian supporters,” others may be “amateurs or copycats who want to use the excuse of Russia to cause disruption,” he added. In many instances, “there is still no official proof” of Russian involvement.
However, other drone incursions show signs of a more concerted strategy. “We have a body of clues, and these clues stem from the fact that the drones being used are not cheap devices you can buy online,” said Michel Liégeois, professor of international relations at UCLouvain, of the spate of sightings in Belgium.
“They are fairly sophisticated drones, and tests have shown that they are resistant to standard jamming techniques,” he said.
He added that the choice of targets, often airports and military bases, shows intent. “It goes well beyond the curiosity of an average citizen. And the fact that all this has multiplied in such a short time clearly shows that it’s coordinated. It can’t simply be random — as if suddenly lots of people across Europe, for reasons unknown, all decided to do the same thing.”
Liégeois pointed to Europe’s growing military support for Kyiv.
“So the message [from Russia] is: by supporting Ukraine to this extent in its war with Russia, you are, in a way, becoming co-belligerents, and you are exposing yourselves to retaliation, because you are harming Russia’s interests,” he said. “For the moment, we’re only flying a few unarmed drones, but that means we are capable of more.”
