Since becoming autonomous in September 2020, the EuroHPC JU has translated its founding mandate into demonstrable scientific, technological and societal outcomes. It has done this by deploying, operating, and giving users access to a world-class European high-performance and advanced computing ecosystem.
Among the twelve supercomputers that the EuroHPC JU has procured so far, there are flagship systems such as the first European exascale system, JUPITER, as well as the pre-exascale LUMI and Leonardo, all ranking in the top10 in the current TOP500 ranking list, the internationally recognised ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
LUMI and Leonardo have remained in the global top ten since their entry in 2022, demonstrating sustained excellence over three consecutive years. Alongside these, systems such as MareNostrum 5 and the EuroHPC mid-range machines have consistently been featured in the TOP500 since their deployment, while JUPITER has recently stood out as the world’s most energy-efficient exascale system.
The infrastructure that the EuroHPC JU is establishing, comprises a network of leading supercomputers, distributed across many European Union countries. These systems are set to be interconnected through a federated platform by mid-2026 and work is ongoing to enhance hyperconnectivity across the network. Alongside this, an emerging quantum capability will provide researchers, industry, and public authorities with unprecedented access to advanced computing.
In these past five years, the EuroHPC JU has awarded access to more than 145 million node hours across its systems and has enabled some 2,334 individual projects to run at scale, covering domains from climate and Earth-system science to medicine, materials, aerospace engineering and data-intensive artificial intelligence (AI).
The science that these resources have enabled demonstrates why public investment in sovereign, European, and sustainable computing is indispensable.
In this context, the EuroHPC systems have supported projects that advance fundamental understanding and provide decision-ready knowledge for citizens and policy-makers.
A striking example is the recent full Earth-system simulation at approximately one kilometre horizontal resolution carried out with the ICON model on the EuroHPC system JUPITER. This work captured the flow of energy, water and carbon through atmosphere, ocean and land at a clarity previously thought impracticable, and it has been presented to the international community while winning the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling.
Such simulations make it possible to resolve extreme weather processes and regional impacts of climate change in a scientifically robust way, therefore improving the adaptation and resilience planning for decision-makers.
In 2024, likewise, Destination Earth (DestinE), the European digital-twin initiative led by the European Commission, which has benefited from strategic access to EuroHPC resources, was able to exploit the JU’s supercomputers to assemble multi-decadal, kilometre-scale climate and impact simulations. This led to the DestinE's Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin being shortlisted for recognition in the Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. Once again, these outputs demonstrate how EuroHPC-enabled science can provide trustworthy information that planners and national authorities require for adaptation decisions.
Equally important are achievements in computational fluid dynamics and scientific code development that were also developed on EuroHPC supercomputers.
Within this scope, NEKO, a European portable and scalable framework for computational fluid dynamics developed by a European team and scaled on LUMI and Leonardo, was shortlisted for the 2023 ACM Gordon Bell Prize. By enabling these types of simulations at unprecedented scale and efficiency, projects running of EuroHPC systems directly support practical applications, including safer aircraft design, cleaner industrial processes and improved environmental hazard assessments.
Beyond these headline achievements and the many other awarded projects, the EuroHPC JU implements dedicated research and innovation activities, that addresses a broad portfolio of societal priorities alongside its infrastructure activities.
To date, the EuroHPC JU has funded around sixty projects, strengthening European technology supply chains across hardware and applications, advancing system software, and delivering training initiatives that expand skills across EuroHPC participating states.
Projects such as SEANERGYS, which develops energy-aware software for efficient supercomputer operation, and DARE, which advances RISC-V-based hardware and software, illustrate the mentioned coupling of infrastructure and research.
Therefore, the EuroHPC systems are procured across Europe and are also used to develop technologies for future supercomputers, promoting sustainability and long-term European competitiveness
The societal value of the research enabled by EuroHPC JU is thus multi-faceted. The pattern of publication and peer-review across EuroHPC-awarded projects is also notable: the teams behind the awarded projects that got access to the EuroHPC supercomputers, have been featured in international journals and conference proceedings that are respected both by domain specialists and by the broader computational science community.
Examples include ACM and Supercomputing Conference (SC) proceedings, as well as journal articles in Earth-system and climate science domain, methodological papers in computational physics and materials science, and many more.
As the EuroHPC JU approaches its next phase, the emphasis will remain on sustaining and widening access to EuroHPC computational resources, on ensuring that the scientific outputs are translated into societal benefits, and on continuing to develop the European supply chain for exascale and post-exascale technologies.
In addition to this, the European Quantum computing infrastructure led by EuroHPC JU is integrating quantum technologies with existing supercomputers, further expanding the computational capabilities available to European researchers.
The EuroHPC JU has already deployed six procured quantum computers encompassing a range of technologies, including superconducting, superconducting–annealing, neutral atoms, photonic, and trapped ions. Among these, two have been already inaugurated: Piast-Q in Poznań (Poland) and VLQ in Ostrava (Czechia), alongside HPCQS quantum simulators Jade (Germany) and Ruby (France). Additionally, two more quantum computers are planned for operation in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. These advancements complement the HPC systems and are ready to transform future computing landscapes.
On the AI front, the AI Factories initiative launched by the EuroHPC JU in 2024 is strategically strengthening Europe’s AI ecosystem. With 19 AI Factories and 13 AI Factory Antennas across Europe, the EuroHPC JU is offering SMEs and startups free and fast access in a few days, and customised support to develop and deploy AI solutions.
Moreover, in 2023, the EuroHPC JU and the European Commission launched the AI Grand Challenge to promote large-scale AI innovation. As a result, four startups were awarded €1 million and 8 million GPU hours on LUMI and Leonardo supercomputers, enabling faster AI model development and the subsequent dissemination of results through open-source channels.
Together, these initiatives represent key milestones in ensuring that Europe remains at the forefront of AI development.
The past five years clearly demonstrate how the EuroHPC JU has delivered tangible benefits for research, industry, and society. By investing in a sovereign, energy-efficient, and widely accessible European supercomputing infrastructure, it continues to enable breakthroughs across areas such as software applications, climate adaptation, health, fluid dynamics, AI, quantum technologies, and more.
Through these ongoing initiatives, the EuroHPC JU is ensuring that Europe remains at the forefront of scientific computing, building a resilient, innovative, and prosperous digital ecosystem for all, therefore empowering citizens through cutting-edge science and technology. These achievements, however, represent only the first steps: the second exascale system, Alice Recoque, is already underway, JUPITER only reached full capacity this November, quantum computers are onboarding their very first users, and many more EuroHPC quantum systems are still being deployed.
Looking ahead, the EuroHPC JU is positioned to expand its activities further, potentially under a new mandate, continuing to drive Europe’s leadership in high-performance and quantum computing for years to come.
Details
- Publication date
- 17 December 2025
- Author
- European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking