A 95-Metre Sturge & Toth Concept Arrives With No Yard Attached

What does Project Galaqsea actually look like?

Project Galaqsea is a 95-metre concept arranged around a full-height glass-shaft lift and spiral staircase, with 180-degree panoramic glazing at the beam and a light column that projects from the highest structural point during arrivals.

Sturge & Toth calls Galaqsea a holistic architectural system, meaning the internal layout, the external structure and the guest experience were drawn together rather than styled separately, a working method it developed with Lateral Naval Architects. The studio says the concept was inspired by the vast order and mystery of our galaxy, which shows up as layered, defined decks and a flowing geometry rather than a literal theme. The 180-degree panoramic glazing at the beam is the most visible result, extending the hull's width outward rather than breaking it into separate window bands. The vertically aligned spatial core, the spiral staircase and glass-shaft elevator that runs from the lower deck to the sundeck, is described as the vessel's circulatory centre, the route a guest or owner would actually use to move through the yacht's full height.

Below that core, the brief calls for 16 guests across a layout built around private balconies, convertible social areas and dedicated wellness spaces, with a 31-strong crew running the yacht. The owner's deck is private and open-plan, a configuration Sturge & Toth chose to enhance scale and orientation rather than divide the deck into separate rooms. At the waterline, the beach club is designed as a transformative zone, with large fold-down shell doors that extend the deck space to nearly reach the midship platforms and open a 180-degree view of the water. A garage sized for a 12-metre limousine tender sits within the hull, a size class the studio already designs through its own Gladius tender line with Falcon Tenders.

Who is behind Project Galaqsea?

Project Galaqsea comes from Sturge & Toth, an independent studio founded by Toby Sturge, previously of H2 Yacht Design, and Ben Julian Toth, BOAT International's 2012 Young Designer of the Year, working out of London, Antibes and Vienna.

Toby Sturge is the studio's managing director and trained at the University of the Arts London before working at H2 Yacht Design, one of the larger established interior houses. Ben Julian Toth is creative director, an Austrian industrial designer with an international client base spanning the United States and Europe and the winner of BOAT International's Young Designer of the Year award in 2012. Together the pair run a team the studio describes as carrying more than twenty years of combined industry experience, split across London, Antibes and Vienna rather than one head office. Project Galaqsea is not their first announcement this year, and not even their first this month: the studio revealed the interiors of its 52-metre Gladius 52 Crossover Performance concept shortly before Galaqsea, and separately unveiled EPOQ, a 24 to 46-metre gentleman's motor yacht series developed with the Turkish shipyard SES Yachts and the brokerage firm Ocean Independence.

That EPOQ project matters more than a second headline would suggest, because it is the one Sturge & Toth concept in this run that already has both a shipyard and a distributor attached, rather than sitting as a rendering exercise. Sturge & Toth also works outside yachting, with divisions the studio calls sea, land and air, covering bespoke residential and hospitality interiors and private jet cabins alongside superyachts. For an owner or a yard sizing up Galaqsea, that breadth is the relevant credential: a studio with a design record across several industries, whose yacht-specific credibility still rests on how many of its concepts, EPOQ included, actually reach a shipyard rather than a press release.

Who is engineering Project Galaqsea, and does that matter?

Lateral Naval Architects, founded in 2018 as a joint venture between the shipyard Oceanco and the engineering firm BMT Nigel Gee, is doing the structural and technical work behind Galaqsea, and that partnership is what separates a buildable concept from a styling exercise.

A design studio can draw almost anything. A naval architect is the one who has to say whether it will float, meet class rules and actually reach the speed a studio has put on a render. Lateral Naval Architects offers exactly that range of services, from naval architecture and structural engineering through mechanical and outfit engineering to concept, class-level and detail design, taking a project from first sketch through construction, operation and eventual refit. Its lineage matters here: Lateral was established as a partnership between Oceanco, a yard capable of actually building something the size of Galaqsea, and BMT Nigel Gee, a naval architecture practice with decades of commercial and military marine engineering behind it. Sturge & Toth frames the relationship as a deliberate pairing of vision with engineering ambition, with Toby Sturge and Ben Julian Toth describing Galaqsea as more than a single yacht, a platform the two studios intend to keep developing together.

On the technical side, the pairing has settled on a single-level engine room on the tank deck, which the studio says clears enough vertical volume elsewhere in the hull to run the glass-shaft lift and spiral staircase the full height of the yacht without competing with machinery space. The proposed propulsion is a diesel-electric hybrid system driving pods, which Sturge & Toth expects to reach 16 knots, though it has not published a cruising speed, a range or a fuel capacity to go with that figure. Pod drives paired with diesel-electric generation are a configuration already running on other large motor yachts, chosen for the redundancy and the quieter operation they allow at anchor, so the choice itself is not unusual. What is unusual is that a design studio, rather than a shipyard's own engineering office, is the one presenting it before any keel exists.

What has not been published about Project Galaqsea?

Sturge & Toth has not named a shipyard, a gross tonnage figure, a range or a price for Project Galaqsea, and the 16-knot figure is described only as an expectation rather than a result from any published naval architecture calculation.

Every number attached to Galaqsea so far describes the brief rather than a tested design: 95 metres of length, 16 guests, 31 crew and a target of 16 knots, but no gross tonnage, no range, no fuel capacity and no confirmed engine make or output. That is a normal stage for a concept still being pitched rather than a defect specific to this studio, but it means nobody outside Sturge & Toth and Lateral can yet check the 16-knot claim against a hull form, a displacement figure or an engine spec sheet. It also means there is no price to compare against anything else on the water, and no shipyard has been named to build it, quote a delivery slot or put a number on what a 95-metre custom hybrid yacht with this layout would actually cost.

The nearest real reference point is not Galaqsea itself but the resale market for yachts near its size: Feadship's 99.95-metre Moonrise sold in the first half of 2026 for a last-known asking price of EUR 325 million, the largest single transaction in a record half-year for brokerage sales. That is a built, delivered yacht with a sale price attached, not a guide to what a new 95-metre custom concept would cost to commission, but it is the scale of number a buyer should expect to be discussing once Galaqsea, or anything like it, actually reaches a yard and a contract.

What would it take for Project Galaqsea to actually get built?

A studio-led concept the size of Project Galaqsea becomes a real yacht only once a shipyard commits capacity and an owner commits capital, the same two steps Sturge & Toth's EPOQ series needed before SES Yachts and Ocean Independence signed on, and neither has happened yet for Galaqsea.

Sturge & Toth timed Galaqsea's release for the week before the Monaco Yacht Show, which runs 23 to 26 September 2026 and draws the owners, brokers and yard executives most likely to decide whether a concept like this goes further. That is also where EPOQ and the Gladius 52 have had their own moments in front of exactly that audience, and EPOQ is the proof that the route from a studio rendering to a named shipyard and a brokerage partner is real, even if it is not fast. Toby Sturge and Ben Julian Toth describe Galaqsea as a platform rather than a single yacht, language that reads as an invitation for a yard or an owner's office to help shape the next stage of it rather than a finished specification waiting for a signature.

For a buyer or an owner's representative, the useful read on Project Galaqsea today is narrow: a credible naval architect is attached, the studio has a recent record of turning at least one concept into a real build, and nothing here is yet buyable, costed or scheduled. Whether Galaqsea becomes the studio's largest built yacht or its most elaborate portfolio piece depends on what happens after Monaco, not on anything published this week.