The Future Circular Collider (FCC)
Published on 16 Oct 2025
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research which runs the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is pushing plans to build the three-times bigger (and faster) Future Circular Collider, which could cost as much as 20 billion euros.
The FCC is planned as an underground circular tunnel with a circumference of 90.7 km and access shaft depths between 180 and 400 m, with eight surface sites and four experiments.
The tunnel would initially house the FCC-ee, an electron–positron collider for precision measurements offering a 15-year research programme from the late 2040s.
A second machine, the FCC-hh, would then be installed in the same tunnel, reusing the existing infrastructure, similar to when the LHC replaced the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP).
The FCC-hh aims to reach collision energies of 100 TeV (teraelectronvolt), colliding protons and also heavy ions, and running until the end of the 21st century.
