The secretary of the 2026 European strategy update, Karl Jakobs, talks about the strong community involvement needed to reach a consensus for the future of our field.
The European strategy for particle physics is the cornerstone of Europe’s decision-making process for the long-term future of the field. In March 2024 CERN Council launched the programme for the third update of the strategy. The European Strategy Group (ESG) and the strategy secretariat for this update were established by CERN Council in June 2024 to organise the full process. Over the past few months, important aspects of the process have been set up, and these are described in more detail on the strategy web pages at europeanstrategyupdate.web.cern.ch/welcome.
The Physics Preparatory Group (PPG) will play an important role in distilling the community’s scientific input and scientific discussions at the open symposium in Venice in June 2025 into a “physics briefing book”. At its meeting in September 2024, CERN Council appointed eight members of the PPG, four on the recommendation of the scientific policy committee and four on the recommendation of the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA). In addition, the PPG has one representative from CERN and two representatives each from the Americas and Asia.
The strategy secretariat also proposed to form nine working groups to cover the full range of physics topics as well as the technology areas of accelerators, detectors and computing. The work of these groups will be co-organised by two conveners, with one of them being a member of the PPG. In addition, an early-career researcher has been appointed to each group to act as a scientific secretary. Both the appointments of the co-conveners and of the early-career researchers are important to increase the engagement by the broader community in the current update. The full composition of the PPG, the co-conveners and the scientific secretaries of the working groups is available on the strategy web pages.
The strategy secretariat has also devised guidelines for input by the community. Any submitted documents must be no more than 10 pages long and provide a comprehensive and self-contained summary of the input. Additional information and details can be submitted in a separate backup document that can be consulted on by the PPG if clarification on any aspect is required. A backup document is not, however, mandatory.
A major component are inputs by national high-energy physics communities, which are expected to be collected individually by each country, and in some cases by region. The information collected from different countries and regions will be most useful if it is as coherent and uniform as possible when addressing the key issues. To assist with this, the ECFA has put together a set of guidelines.
It is anticipated that a number of proposals for large-scale research projects will be submitted as input to the strategy process, including, but not limited to, particle colliders and collider detectors. These proposals are likely to vary in scale, anticipated timeline and technical maturity. In addition to studying the scientific potential of these projects, the ESG wishes to evaluate the sequence of delivery steps and the challenges associated with delivery, and to understand how each project could fit into the wider roadmap for European particle physics. In order to allow a straightforward comparison of projects, we therefore request that all large-scale projects submit a standardised set of technical data in addition to their physics case and technical description.
It is anticipated that a number of proposals for large-scale research projects will be submitted as input to the strategy
To allow the community to take into account and to react to the submissions collected by March 2025 and to the content of the briefing book, national communities are offered further opportunities for input: first ahead of the open symposium (see p11), with a deadline of 26 May 2025; and then ahead of the drafting session, with a deadline of 14 November 2025.
In this strategy process the community must converge on a preferred option for the next collider at CERN and identify a prioritised list of alternative options. The outcome of the process will provide the basis for the decision by CERN Council in 2027 or 2028 on the construction of the next large collider at CERN, following the High-Luminosity LHC. Areas of priority for exploration complementary to colliders and for other experiments to be considered at CERN and other laboratories in Europe will also be identified, as well as priorities for participation in projects outside Europe.
Given the importance of this process and its outcomes, I encourage strong community involvement throughout to reach a consensus for the future of our field.
