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Colonization of the Moon is a process, or concept employed by some proposals, for claiming robotic or human exploitation and settlement on the Moon.
Laying claim to the Moon has been declared illegal through international space law and no state has made such claims, despite having a range of probes and artificial remains on the Moon.
While a range of proposals for missions of lunar colonization, exploitation or permanent exploration have been raised, current projects for establishing permanent crewed presence on the Moon are not for colonizing the Moon, but rather focus on building moonbases for exploration and to a lesser extent for exploitation of lunar resources.
Beside its technological and financial challenges, colonization and particularly exploitation, like its realizations on Earth, has contemporarily been reflected on and criticized as inherently problematic colonialism, and its commercialization having been one of the most contended issues for national and international lunar regulation and laws.