CERN's New Chief Confident Nineteen Billion Dollar Particle Collider Will Get Funded

A Giant Leap for Physics

Mark Thomson, who took over as CERN's director-general on the first of January twenty twenty-six, has voiced strong confidence in securing the roughly nineteen and a half billion dollars needed to build the Future Circular Collider. The British particle physicist described the ambitious project as "a giant leap forward" for scientific discovery.

The proposed FCC would be a ninety-one kilometre proton-smashing ring built approximately two hundred metres underground near Geneva, dwarfing the existing Large Hadron Collider. Its primary mission: investigating dark matter and dark energy, which together constitute ninety-five percent of the universe yet remain largely mysterious to scientists.

Historic Private Support

In December twenty twenty-five, the project received an unprecedented boost when private donors pledged one billion dollars towards construction costs. This marks the first time in CERN's seventy-two year history that individuals and philanthropic foundations have supported a flagship research project.

The donors include the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, and entrepreneurs John Elkann and Xavier Niel. Thomson noted that the contributors expect nothing in return, calling their support "really for the good of science."

The Path Forward

While roughly half the project cost would come from CERN's existing budget, Thomson acknowledged that finding resources for the remaining half "is not going to be straightforward." Nevertheless, he remains personally optimistic.

CERN's council of twenty-five member states will decide in twenty twenty-eight whether to proceed. If approved, construction on the first phase would begin in twenty thirty, with operations anticipated to start in twenty forty-seven.

The project has gained significant momentum, being recommended as the preferred option in the European Strategy for Particle Physics update, which will be finalised by the CERN Council in May twenty twenty-six. It has also been included among eleven proposed Moonshot projects in the European Commission's draft budget framework for twenty twenty-eight to twenty thirty-four.