HiPEAC Vision 2026: Europe should create its own future, not imitate others

With the ripple effects from advances in artificial intelligence (AI) – mostly emanating from outside of Europe and taking place at breakneck speed – spreading relentlessly across the computing ecosystem, the HiPEAC Vision 2026 offers a calm, measured appraisal of the state of the art and offers a path forward for European computing research. Rather than blindly copying the trajectory of other countries, it argues that Europe must chart its own course based around the 'next computing paradigm' proposed in previous editions of the HiPEAC Vision. In this vision, computing is a utility which blends seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life, offering users services on demand while eschewing the antisocial incentives of the attention economy and surveillance capitalism.

HiPEAC Vision 2026

'Artificial intelligence is the most disruptive technology in the domains covered by HiPEAC during the last 20 years. The pace of change is stupefying,' says Marc Duranton (CEA), the HiPEAC Vision editor-in-chief. 'In contrast to the dominant trends of concentrating computing resources in gigantic data centres, represented by the hyperscalers, the HiPEAC Vision calls for distributing computing on demand, spread from near the user to the cloud, with a "local-first" mindset. We foresee an agentic AI infrastructure where agents and specialized action models are dynamically selected based on user criteria, which can include non-functional properties including privacy, safety, energy, latency, cost and sustainability.'

'This edition of the HiPEAC Vision rejects the narrative that Europe cannot compete with the rest of the world,' adds Professor Koen De Bosschere (Ghent University), the coordinator of HiPEAC. 'While Europe lacks companies on the scale of those in the US or China, it has plenty of strengths which should be leveraged to deliver rightsized computing infrastructure for flexible, sustainable, resilient operation – all while respecting the values and culture which are important to European society.'

Illustrated by cartoons exclusively produced for HiPEAC by the Belgian comic artist Arnulf, this year's HiPEAC Vision has chapters dedicated to the following key topics:

The 'next computing paradigm'

Artificial intelligence

New hardware

Tools

Cybersecurity

Open source

Sustainability

State of the European Union

Each chapter has its own recommendations, while a consolidated list of recommendations is also available, grouped into technological, standardization, methodological and policy recommendations.

This year, HiPEAC has also developed a tool which uses the HiPEAC Vision as the exclusive basis for returning answers via AI chatbots, which can be connected to your chatbot of choice via HiPEAC's MCP server. This is complemented by a dedicated tool to explore the text from different angles, such as the policy, industry, investment or educational perspective.

HiPEAC Vision 2026: hipeac.net/vision

HiPEAC MCP server, with instructions for connecting your chatbot: hipeac.net/mcp

Dedicated tool to probe the HiPEAC Vision from different perspectives: ask.hipeac.net

Teaser video on HiPEAC TV: bit.ly/HiPEAC_Vision_2026_teaser

CONNECT University presentation at the European Commission, 19 May 2026: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/events/hipeac-vision-2026-connect-university

For further information and / or original copies of the images used in the Vision, contact Madeleine Gray: [email protected].

About HiPEAC

Supported by the European Commission, HiPEAC (High Performance, Edge And Cloud computing) is the premier focal point for networking, dissemination and training activities in Europe for researchers, industry, and policy related to computing systems. First established in 2004, the project is now in its seventh edition. Today, its network – the biggest of its kind in Europe – numbers over 2,000 specialists.

The latest edition of the project, HiPEAC7, began on 1 December 2022, steered by a consortium of 11 partners led by Gh