Karnataka plans Bengaluru Drone Festival with drone racing and testing hub

Bengaluru's drone-racing scene could soon get a fixed home base: a 10-acre testing facility in Chikkaballapur near Bengaluru airport, paired with an annual Bengaluru Drone Festival that would put racing at the center of Karnataka's drone push. For local pilots, clubs and event organizers, the appeal is practical: repeatable race infrastructure, calendar certainty, spectator access and a pathway from testing hardware to competition.

IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge discussed the plan on May 15 at a high-level industry consultation in Bengaluru organized with the Department of Electronics, IT, BT and the Drone Federation of India. The proposed facility was described as one to be used exclusively by industry and startups, which matters in a hardware-heavy sport where teams need open space to tune frames, validate software and test flight performance before they line up on a course. The festival concept went further, with drone racing set alongside hackathons, innovation showcases and public engagement, making the sport part of a broader event rather than a side attraction.

That matters for Bengaluru because a race scene needs more than prize money or a one-off exhibition. It needs a place where pilots can learn, break, adjust and come back. A dedicated testing hub in Chikkaballapur could give emerging teams that cycle, while the festival could give them a public stage in the same ecosystem. For a city that already anchors much of India’s technology economy, the combination could make drone racing feel less imported and more built into the local landscape.

The consultation drew Airbound, Vecros, CD Space Robotics, ideaForge, Aereo, Asteria Aerospace, LAT Aerospace, Newspace Research & Technologies and Unmanned Autonomy, showing how wide the industry interest had become around the proposal. The Drone Federation of India, a non-government, not-for-profit body representing India’s drone and counter-drone ecosystem, helped convene the discussion, giving the plan an industry backbone as well as a government one. If the project advances, Bengaluru could emerge as a South Asian destination where testing, racing and drone development all happen in the same orbit.

Kharge had already been discussing a Drone Testing Centre in July 2025 as part of a wider state push that also included Space Park and Global Innovation City. Nationally, the sport and industry backdrop has been expanding too: DGCA said in 2023 that 63 Remote Pilot Training Organisations had been approved across India, more than 5,500 Remote Pilot Certificates had been issued and 10,010 drones had been registered. Karnataka now appears to be trying to turn that pipeline into an ecosystem, with Bengaluru at the center of both the engineering and the racing.