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10h ago

CERN Shuts Down Large Hadron Collider to Begin Four-Year HL-LHC Upgrade

The shutdown starts a large-scale replacement of magnets and detectors to raise collision rates and enable phased experiments that aim for full high-luminosity operation by about 2030.

Work on the LHC will soon begin to install new superconducting magnets.
Scientific equipment with "LHC" written on it is pictured in a long tunnel.
Bernd Stelzer, a Simon Fraser University physics professor, holds up a prototype of component that will be used for the next phase of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
Credit: CERN

Overview

  • The LHC, which was taken offline on Monday, June 29, 2026, has ended scientific runs and entered an extended shutdown to be rebuilt as the High-Luminosity LHC over roughly four years.
  • Engineers will remove and replace about 1.2 kilometres of accelerator hardware and install more powerful superconducting magnets plus major detector overhauls inside the 27‑km ring.
  • The upgrade is designed to raise luminosity by up to tenfold so experiments can collect far larger Higgs samples — roughly 380 million Higgs bosons after the upgrade versus about 55 million so far.
  • Post-upgrade collision rates will produce billions of interactions per second, so CERN plans new real-time data-selection systems, including AI tools, because storing full raw data will be impractical.
  • The project is budgeted at about 1.2 billion Swiss francs and funded through CERN member fees and international contributions, and it will shift the work of thousands of scientists and technicians with phased tests from 2028 and full return by about mid‑2030.