In this article, we report on the fabrication and optical properties of highly transparent yttria ceramics for lasers active media with broadband gain profile. Laser synthesis method was used to produce Y 2 O 3 -based nanopowders doped with 1mol.% Nd 3+ or Yb 3+ for these transparent ceramics. The additives of sesquioxides Lu 2 O 3 and Sc 2 O 3 were used along with ZrO 2 to disorder the crystalline structure. The porosity and average grain size decrease with these additives and the emission bandwidths of Nd 3+ ( 4 F 3/2 → 4 I 11/2 ) and Yb 3+ ( 2 F 5/2 → 2 F 7/2 ) transitions widen to 40 and 60nm, respectively. Laser operation with the slope efficiency of 29% was obtained in [(Yb 0.01 Lu 0.24 Y 0.75 ) 2 O 3 ] 0.88 (ZrO 2 ) 0.12 ceramic sample.