Play as · WW3 2026 · L1 · French Overseas Region · Spaceport

French Guiana - 2026

French Guiana is the French overseas region on the South American mainland - population about 300,000 (the largest French overseas region by area at 84,000 km², most of which is Amazon rainforest), GDP around $5B PPP, and an integral part of the French Republic and the European Union (the only EU territory on the South American continental landmass). The country hosts the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) at Kourou - the principal European spaceport, the launch site for Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets and the historical Soyuz launches under the now-suspended Russian-French cooperation - that has been the central strategic-and-economic asset and the principal European space-launch capability. The strategic identity is the European spaceport on the South American mainland with the substantial French-citizenship social-and-economic transfer architecture, the Amazon-rainforest-and-gold-mining-and-shrimp economy, and the multi-cultural Creole-Hmong-Brazilian-Surinamese-Maroon-Amerindian population.

Starting position

French Guiana defense responsibility rests with France - the Forces Armées en Guyane (about 2,100 personnel) operate the principal military presence including the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment of the French Foreign Legion, the 9th Marine Infantry Regiment, the gendarmerie units that have substantial counter-narcotics and illegal-mining operational responsibility, and the broader bilateral cooperation across the French Overseas Territories framework. The Guiana Space Centre at Kourou hosts the European Space Agency operations, the Ariane Group launch services, and the broader European space-industry ecosystem. The substantial French-citizenship social-and-economic-transfer flows have been the principal economic foundation alongside the spaceport-related employment.

What turns the campaign

What French Guiana wants is the Guiana Space Centre operations preserved and progressively expanded (the Ariane 6 launch cadence ramp, the Vega-C return-to-flight cadence, the broader European space-launch capacity), the Amazon-rainforest conservation-and-illegal-mining-suppression operations sustained at the operational scale the French government commits, the French-citizenship social-and-economic-transfer flows preserved at the historical levels, the Brazilian and Surinamese cross-border cooperation deepened, and the French overseas-region political-institutional engagement maintained at the level the broader French overseas-territories political-environment supports. What French Guiana fears is a French political shift that compresses the spaceport investment commitments (the European space-launch competitiveness has been continuously challenged by the SpaceX-and-broader-US private-launch industry, the budget pressures have been periodically substantial), a continuing illegal-gold-mining environmental-and-security pressure that exceeds the operational containment capacity, and a regional security crisis (Surinamese political-economic instability, Brazilian Amazon-region pressures) that the limited regional-cooperation framework cannot address.

Signature challenge