| Date | 1 Sep 2026 |
| Tracker | European Airspace Violations |
| Type | Incursion |
| Location |
Alūksne Municipality, Latvia
57.38, 27.19 (approximate) |
Latvia's National Armed Forces declared an airspace threat over Alūksne Municipality at 03:37 on 1 September 2026 and activated the NATO Baltic Air Policing fighters; the alert ended at 04:17, with Latvian media reporting the drone had crossed on into Estonia. Estonia had already warned Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru counties at 03:11 over a drone that turned back short of Narva, and alerted six southern counties at 03:48. The air force commander said this one crossed the border and stayed close to it, though residents of Põlva, thirty-five kilometres inland, said they heard it. Turkish F-16s from Ämari were scrambled and did not fire; all alerts were lifted before 06:00. Neither country named an operator.
| Date | Type | Incident |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Five Russian drones cross Moldova hours before the Independence Day parade |
| 28 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Turkish drone crosses into Greek airspace near Alexandroupolis airport |
| 30 Aug 2026 | Incursion | Unidentified aerial object enters Moldova at Dnestrovsk and turns back after nine minutes |
| 1 Sep 2026 | Strike | Drone carrying explosives found in a Vaslui field thirty kilometres inside Romania |
GlobalMilitary.net's 2026 inventory snapshot shows nine NATO members — Iceland, Luxembourg, the three Baltic states, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Slovenia — hold no fixed-wing fighters, attack aircraft or bombers and depend on Allied air policing.
GlobalMilitary.net's incident log counts 45 established violations of European airspace between January 1 and August 16, 2026, against 31 for the whole of 2025 - and almost all of the growth sits in incidents that ended with a shootdown or an explosion on the ground.
An Italian Eurofighter on NATO Baltic Air Policing duty destroyed an unidentified drone over eastern Latvia before dawn on 14 August, the second time the alliance's quick-reaction force has shot one down over the country this year.