Europe's Data Centre Capacity Shift: A New Tapestry Emerges
63% of Europe’s new data centre capacity is now going somewhere other than the big five.
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August 19, 2026 – 2:10 pm
Europe’s data centre capacity will reach 13 gigawatts by the end of 2026, a fifth more than last year, with most of the new supply located outside the traditional hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin.
Of the roughly 700 megawatts added in Q2, only 37% went to these five established markets.
These findings come from CBRE’s European update, highlighting a significant shift driven by "demand outpacing supply, mostly due to a lack of available power causing delays in data center construction."
More than half of all take-up in Q2 happened outside the big five cities.
What is driving developers to explore alternative locations is not solely financial; it’s primarily a matter of time. Connecting new sites in congested core markets can take "10 years or more", according to RaboResearch analysts Owen Thomson and Coen Hutters, compared to significantly shorter waits in countries like Belgium, Portugal, Spain, the Nordics, and Italy.
Amsterdam, for example, faces a decade-long wait, with the Dutch grid operator TenneT stating no additional capacity is available in much of Noord-Holland for the next ten years. The Netherlands also imposes restrictions on hyperscale projects above 70 megawatts or 10 hectares in most areas.
Other factors contributing to this trend include:
- Long lead times: Frankfurt’s central grid won’t see meaningful upgrades until the 2030s, while London’s West London substation work is unlikely before that decade.
- High land costs: Prime powered land in Europe now costs €2.26m per megawatt, up 82% since 2021, with significant premiums between primary, secondary, and tertiary markets.
- Electricity prices: European industrial power ran at roughly twice US levels in 2025, a gap the bloc is trying to address.
Evidence of this shift is evident in the growth of AI-focused data centres. Signings by these providers reached 420 megawatts in Q2, a 4.7-fold increase concentrated in the Nordics. Spain has also emerged as a new destination, with projected installed capacity of 2,537 megawatts by 2030 driven largely by Amazon’s significant investments in Aragón.
In Finland, Nebius is building a €8.5bn, 310-megawatt site at Lappeenranta, while the Stargate Norway project near Narvik is starting at 230 megawatts utilizing hydropower with further expansion planned. Ireland has also reopened its connection moratorium, offering behind-the-meter generation opportunities in unconstrained locations matching 80% of annual demand.