At 01:12 MSK on April 19, 2018 (22:12 on April 18, 2018 UTC) the Space and Air Defense Forces conducted a successful launch of a Proton-M launcher from Baykonur. The satellite that was successfully delivered into orbit by the Briz-M booster stage, received the official designation Cosmos-2526.

Cosmos-2526 is the Blagovest communication satellite (No. 12) produced at the Reshetnev ISS enterprise in Zheleznogorsk.

Previous launch of a satellite of this type, Cosmos-2520, took place in August 2017.