Today, following more than two years of intense work of the European particle physics community under the auspices of the European Strategy Group, the CERN Council updated the European Strategy for Particle Physics [link to Resolution], which sets out an ambitious scientific vision for the field. The 2026 Strategy update offers a clear path to maintain European leadership in high-energy physics while attracting global collaboration to CERN, advancing technology and bringing many potential benefits to society. The recommendations [link to Recommendations] address a broad range of topics and goals relating to research in high-energy physics in Europe and beyond.
The aim of this Strategy update, initiated in March 2024, was for the particle physics community to develop a concrete plan for greatly advancing knowledge in fundamental physics through the construction of a new flagship project at CERN. Following extensive consultation among particle physicists in Europe and beyond, and the consideration of more than 260 written submissions, the Strategy recommendations were submitted to the CERN Council in December 2025 [link to December Press Release].
Furthering our understanding of the Higgs boson has been a driving force behind the planning for the long-term future of particle physics. The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 marked the beginning of a new era in particle physics. It confirmed a spectacular prediction of the Standard Model of particle physics and provided a radical new tool to explore outstanding mysteries about the content, structure and evolution of the Universe.
The Strategy recommendations confirmed that the full exploitation of the scientific potential of the LHC through the completion of its high-luminosity upgrades remains the highest medium-term priority for European particle physics. For the longer term, the electron–positron Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) was recommended as the preferred option for the next flagship project at CERN, thereby maintaining Europe’s leadership in the field.
The FCC-ee would offer the broadest exploratory programme in fundamental physics, with outstanding discovery potential. It would provide a visionary physics programme addressing many of the open questions in particle physics, notably about the Higgs boson, that are critical to understanding the foundations of the Standard Model and opening up opportunities for discovering new physics beyond the Standard Model. At the same time, the FCC-ee would drive the development of new technologies and train thousands of early-career scientists, engineers and technicians.
The 2026 update of the European Strategy builds on the previous update in 2020, which had already emphasised the importance of ensuring Europe’s continued scientific and technological leadership, and recommended an electron-positron “Higgs factory” as the highest-priority next facility after the LHC reaches the end of its operational lifetime in 2041[link to Press Release]. Based on the 2020 Strategy update, CERN and international partners conducted a feasibility study for a possible Future Circular Collider that was published in March 2025 [link to Press Release] and reviewed by the CERN Council in November 2025 [link to Press Release].
In addition to updating the Strategy, the Council has invited the CERN Management to initiate discussions with the relevant authorities and entities in the Member and Associate Member States, as well as non-Member States and the European Union, with a view to developing a financially feasible funding plan for the possible FCC-ee project. In the next two years, the CERN Management will provide annual reports on the implementation of the Strategy update and the necessary information to support national decision-making processes so that the Council will be in a position, by 2028, to take a decision on the FCC-ee, taking into account elements such as the scientific, technical and financial feasibility of the project, as well as results from the public consultation exercises in CERN’s Host States, France and Switzerland.
“The high-energy physics community and the CERN Council have been united for this critical update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, and the FCC-ee has emerged as the preferred flagship project to maintain CERN’s world-leading role in collider physics and technology in the decades to come,” said Costas Fountas, Council President. “I wish the CERN Management the greatest success in implementing the Council resolution between now and the 2028 target decision date .”
“The European Strategy reiterates the critical importance of the High-Luminosity LHC, which will use advanced accelerator and detector technologies to fully exploit the scientific potential of this incredible machine in the coming years,” said Mark Thomson, CERN Director-General. “Beyond HiLumi LHC, the FCC-ee would be a visionary global research infrastructure for the next decades that will deepen our knowledge of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe through ultra-precise measurements of the Higgs boson and other elementary particles. CERN’s task now is to steer this unprecedented project towards a decision by the CERN Council.”
“The Strategy process has seen a very strong engagement of the particle physics community and has led to a very clear conclusion: the FCC-ee, if approved, would deliver the world’s broadest high-precision particle physics programme, its technical feasibility has been demonstrated by the comprehensive FCC Feasibility Study and its scope and cost are well defined,” said Karl Jakobs, Strategy Secretary. “It would also pave the way for a possible future hadron collider reusing the tunnel and much of the infrastructure, providing direct discovery reach well beyond the 10 TeV parton energy scale.”