In a decisive move that underscores the growing global demand for both clean energy resources and precious metals, Foremost Clean Energy Ltd. has committed to a substantial $9.0 million exploration program for 2026, targeting high-potential uranium and gold assets. This multi-faceted initiative is designed to aggressively advance the company’s mineral portfolio through a projected 11,500 meters of drilling, strategically allocated across key projects in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The program’s design reflects a disciplined, data-driven approach, leveraging a vast repository of historical information alongside modern geophysical techniques to maximize the probability of significant new discoveries. The primary thrust of this ambitious campaign is aimed at unlocking the uranium potential within Saskatchewan’s prolific Athabasca Basin, a region renowned for hosting the world’s highest-grade uranium deposits. This uranium-centric strategy is intelligently complemented by a secondary initiative focused on expanding a known high-grade gold system at the Jean Lake Project, providing a balanced portfolio approach that mitigates risk while pursuing high-impact rewards. Jason Barnard, President and CEO, has emphasized that this significant capital deployment is a direct result of the company’s confidence in its assets and the technical groundwork laid over the past year, positioning Foremost for a transformative year of exploration and potential value creation.
A Strategic Pivot to Uranium in the Athabasca Basin
The cornerstone of the 2026 exploration agenda is the systematic and aggressive advancement of Foremost’s extensive uranium holdings within the Athabasca Basin. This strategic focus is underpinned by the company’s option to earn significant interest in a portfolio of 10 distinct uranium projects, encompassing a massive land package of over 130,000 hectares, from the prominent uranium company Denison Mines Corp. A critical and valuable component of this arrangement is the inheritance of a comprehensive database of historical exploration data, including detailed geophysical surveys, geochemical analyses, and previous drilling logs compiled by Denison. This wealth of legacy information provides an invaluable head start, significantly reducing initial exploration risk and cost. By meticulously integrating this historical dataset with the results of its own exploration activities conducted over the past year, Foremost has successfully identified and prioritized several key target areas that form the basis of the upcoming drilling campaigns. This methodical approach ensures that the substantial financial commitment is directed toward the most prospective zones, where the confluence of geological, geophysical, and geochemical indicators points to the highest potential for discovery. This positions the company not just as an explorer, but as a strategic developer leveraging decades of accumulated knowledge to unlock new resources in a world-class uranium district.
At the heart of this uranium initiative lies the Hatchet Lake property, which has been elevated to the company’s flagship asset and top priority for the 2026 winter drilling season. Foremost plans to execute an extensive diamond drilling program of approximately 5,000 meters, a significant expansion directly catalyzed by a pivotal uranium discovery made during the 2025 campaign. That discovery, in drill hole TF-25-16, intersected a notable mineralized zone returning 6.2 meters of 0.10% U₃O₈, which critically included a high-grade sub-interval of 0.87% U₃O₈ over 0.45 meters. To further refine and optimize targeting ahead of the winter program, the company is utilizing modern techniques and is currently awaiting the results from a ground-based gravity survey. This survey is strategically focused on the southern extension of the Richardson Trend, a well-established and highly prospective basement structural corridor known for hosting brittle-ductile, graphitic shear zones—the ideal geological conduits for uranium-bearing fluids. Previous historical drilling by Denison along this very trend confirmed its potential, with notable intercepts including 1.52% U₃O₈ over 0.15 meters. Foremost’s 2026 drilling strategy at Hatchet Lake will employ a sophisticated, integrated approach, targeting the Tuning Fork discovery area while also testing shallow, under-explored segments of the Richardson Trend, guided by a combined interpretation of new gravity data alongside existing electromagnetic, magnetic, and geological datasets.
Broadening the Uranium Search and Mitigating Risk
Following the intensive winter program at Hatchet Lake, Foremost will strategically shift its operational focus to the Turkey Lake Uranium Project for a summer 2026 drilling campaign. The company has already secured a three-year exploration permit and has proactively completed a ground-based gravity survey to prepare for this program, which is expected to consist of between 2,000 and 2,500 meters of diamond drilling. The Turkey Lake property is considered a highly attractive and cost-effective target due to several key geological advantages. It hosts exceptionally shallow unconformity depths, generally less than 50 meters from the surface, which drastically reduces drilling costs and accelerates exploration timelines compared to deeper targets elsewhere in the basin. Furthermore, the property contains a conductive corridor with a strike length of more than 10 kilometers that remains largely under-tested, representing a significant exploration opportunity. Historical work at Turkey Lake by industry leaders Cameco and Denison successfully identified unconformity-associated uranium mineralization, with historical drill intercepts including 0.16% U₃O₈ over 0.6 meters at a shallow vertical depth of approximately 20 meters. The 2026 drill program at Turkey Lake is being strategically designed to test for both this style of unconformity-related mineralization and deeper, basement-hosted styles of uranium mineralization along these promising and underexplored conductive corridors.
In addition to the primary drill targets at Hatchet and Turkey Lakes, Foremost is methodically advancing its pipeline of earlier-stage assets, including the GR and Blackwing properties. This demonstrates a long-term strategic vision aimed at ensuring a continuous stream of drill-ready targets for future campaigns. The company recently received and is currently interpreting the results from a large-scale, district-wide MobileMT™ survey, an advanced airborne geophysical technique that provides deep-penetrating insights into subsurface conductivity and structure. The next logical step, planned for 2026, is to conduct follow-up ground-based geophysical surveys on both properties. The primary objective of this ground-truthing work is to further delineate and refine the broad anomalies identified by the aerial survey, transforming them into specific, high-confidence, drill-ready targets. This phased and systematic approach to exploration ensures that capital is deployed efficiently, moving projects methodically up the value chain from regional concepts to well-defined prospects. This structured process not only manages exploration risk but also maximizes the potential for future discoveries across the company’s extensive land package, building a robust and sustainable project pipeline.
Unlocking Potential at the Jean Lake Gold Project
While uranium exploration forms the core of its strategy, Foremost is also allocating significant resources to its Jean Lake Gold Lithium Project in Manitoba, thereby diversifying its commodity exposure and providing shareholders with additional avenues for discovery-driven growth. The company plans a substantial 2026 drill program of approximately 4,000 meters at the project. This program is being meticulously designed based on the highly encouraging results from the recently completed 2025 diamond drill program, which consisted of 15 holes totaling 2,266 meters. The initial assay results from the first four holes of that program have already successfully defined a near-surface mineralized footprint that extends well beyond the original discovery area. These results include compelling high-grade gold intercepts, such as 12.7 g/t Au over 2.1 meters, which included a very high-grade core of 40.0 g/t Au over 0.6 meters. Another hole returned an impressive 10.7 g/t Au over 5.6 meters, including a bonanza-grade intercept of 82.0 g/t Au over 0.7 meters. With assay results for the remaining 11 drill holes from this program still pending, there is considerable anticipation for further positive news that could significantly expand the known scope of the gold system.
In parallel with awaiting new results, Foremost has initiated a strategic re-sampling program of high-priority drill core from its 2023 drilling campaign. This meticulous effort is focused on areas adjacent to previously identified high-grade intercepts along the promising Valkyrie Trend, which includes a remarkable historical result of 102 g/t Au over 0.5 meters within a broader mineralized zone. The data gathered from the pending 2025 assays and the 2023 core re-sampling will be carefully integrated with all historical and recent geological data to comprehensively update the project’s geological model. This updated and refined model will serve as the primary guide for finalizing and prioritizing specific targets for the planned 4,000-meter drill program in 2026. This demonstrates a commitment to a thorough, data-driven exploration philosophy, where each phase of work informs the next, systematically de-risking the project and maximizing the efficiency of every dollar spent on drilling. The goal is to not only confirm the high-grade nature of the Jean Lake mineralization but also to define its scale and geometry, laying the groundwork for a potential future resource.
A Foundation of Technical Diligence and Future Outlook
The comprehensive exploration plan was built upon a foundation of rigorous technical review and strategic foresight. The approval of all technical information by Cameron MacKay, a Qualified Person under the guidelines of National Instrument 43-101, provided the necessary validation for the ambitious program. While the company acknowledged that not all historical data from previous operators had been independently verified to modern standards, that information was deemed fundamentally relevant and instrumental in guiding the new exploration initiatives. The program represented a pivotal moment of calculated expansion, where a dual-commodity focus on both high-growth uranium and high-value gold was implemented to balance risk and opportunity. The strategic leveraging of extensive historical datasets combined with modern geophysical surveys established an efficient operational blueprint. Ultimately, this well-funded and technically grounded campaign positioned Foremost Clean Energy to aggressively pursue transformative discoveries across its portfolio, which had the potential to unlock significant shareholder value.
