Amazon announced on August 19 plans to expand its Prime Air drone delivery service to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase from its current footprint3,4,5.
The company currently offers aerial deliveries in cities across Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas2. It will bring Prime Air to metropolitan areas in Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, and New York by year's end6. Near-term launches are planned for Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise.
"We're pairing the convenience of ultrafast drone delivery with the low prices and selection customers love about Amazon," said David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air.
Amazon said it has already made hundreds of thousands of drone deliveries this year, with thousands being made daily. Carbon projected in an internal all-hands meeting in March that Prime Air will make 1 million deliveries in 2026, according to a recording obtained by CNBC. Amazon described Prime Air as the "highest demand drone delivery service in the industry".
The expansion comes after Amazon received a critical regulatory greenlight in 2024 to conduct long-range drone deliveries. However, the program has faced operational setbacks. In early 2025, Amazon paused commercial drone delivery in Texas and Arizona after two of its latest models crashed at a testing facility in rainy weather. Amazon had to fix the aircraft's software before resuming operations. Amazon's drones also collided with a crane in Tolleson, Arizona in October, an incident under investigation by both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration. Amazon faces another FAA probe after one of its drones snapped an internet cable in November while ascending from a customer's yard in Waco, Texas. In the UK, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch opened a probe after a Prime Air drone crashed into a garden in Darlington, England, where Amazon has been making deliveries since February.
The competitive landscape is active. Wing, Alphabet's drone delivery unit, has surpassed 1 million commercial deliveries and operates in 20 U.S. markets through partnerships with Walmart and DoorDash. Zipline has completed 2 million deliveries across four continents.
ANALYSIS The sixfold geographic expansion signals increasing confidence in the autonomy stack's reliability, though the string of incidents and ongoing regulatory probes indicate the technology is still maturing under real-world conditions.
Jeff Bezos first pledged in 2013 to build a network of drones to deliver small packages in 30 minutes or less. Amazon said it delivered over 13 billion items globally in 2025, with more than 8 billion items reaching U.S. Prime members the same or next day — up 30% from the prior year.
ANALYSIS The 500-city target, if achieved, would represent a step-change in the scale of autonomous drone operations in the United States, though the gap between Carbon's 1 million delivery projection and the "hundreds of thousands" reported so far this year suggests the second half of 2026 will need to deliver a significant acceleration.