The article discusses the problems, directions and opportunities for the development of federal level innovation clusters in the Arctic zone of Russian Federation (AZRF), taking into account the Russian state long-term plans for Arctic territories development and implementing major investment projects. The article analyzes the current territorial structure of supported clusters in the AZRF, explores their industry and production specifics, and identifies the main distinctive features and characteristics of them. Based on the analysis of Russian Arctic regions socio-economic development indicators, the regions, municipalities and cities for the prospective cluster formations development are identified; directions, key specializations and cluster development factors are distinguished. The article justifies the relevance of innovative clusters formation in the context of task innovative, territorial, technological, information and communication, socio-economic development by AZRF. © 2020 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.