Private donors back CERN's multi-decade Future Circular Collider plan

CERN has secured $1 billion in private donations from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund, John Elkann, and Xavier Niel to kick off the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a 90.7-km tunnel intended as the Large Hadron Collider’s successor. The plan features a two-phase roadmap: FCC-ee as a Higgs factory starting around 2030 with operations by 2047, followed by FCC-hh protons at 85 TeV in the 2070s to probe new physics. A CERN Council decision is expected in 2028, with construction potentially starting in 2030. China’s CEPC stall may open collaboration opportunities modeled after ITER, while the HL-LHC upgrade remains a priority in the near term.