The paper reports the development of the approach providing the opportunity to fabricate nanoceramic sources based on yttrium stabilized zirconia (YSZ) for magnetron sputtering. The approach includes sol-gel reverse precipitation synthesis of nanosize YSZ precursor powders with further freeze-drying resulting in high precursor powder dispersity and low agglomeration level in a wide temperature range. The use of such precursor powders makes possible fabrication of YSZ ceramics free of inorganic binders; this ceramics meets the requirements for the magnetron sputtering source material.