Europe's data centre market is undergoing a structural shift as investment in AI infrastructure meets power constraints across the region's established hubs, according to JLL's EMEA Mid-Year Data Centre Report 2026.
The report finds that hyperscale campuses planned between 2026 and 2028 will be located an average of 175 kilometres from major hub cities, compared with just 46 kilometres for projects delivered between 2022 and 2025.
The scale of committed capital
The world's four largest hyperscale cloud providers are expected to invest $725 billion in capital expenditure during 2026, a 77% increase on the $410 billion committed in 2025, with the overwhelming majority directed towards AI compute and data centre infrastructure. JLL expects AI workloads to account for around half of all global data centre capacity by 2030.
AI is the main driver of the change, the report says, because these workloads require significantly larger sites, greater power availability and faster delivery times than conventional enterprise data centres.
Core markets remain tight
Combined live capacity across the five core FLAP-D markets — Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin — has reached 3.8GW, more than doubling since 2019. A further 1.4GW is under construction and 2GW remains in the planned pipeline, while annual deliveries are forecast to reach 453MW during 2026, almost three times the level recorded in 2020.
Supply still struggles to keep pace with demand. Vacancy across FLAP-D remains just 6.4%, with Frankfurt the tightest market at 3.1%. Paris was the strongest-performing market in the first half of 2026, delivering 72.5MW of new capacity and already exceeding its full-year forecast, as France continues to benefit from strong power availability and investment in AI infrastructure.
Greenfield and secondary locations
Greenfield developments now account for 39% of Europe's future pipeline, compared with only 8% of projects delivered over the previous three years — a shift away from traditional industrial estates towards larger regional sites able to accommodate AI-scale infrastructure.
"We're seeing a fundamental change in how data centre infrastructure is planned. Historically, operators built as close as possible to major population centres, but today's growing AI training infrastructure follows a different logic," said Assad Noori, Head of Data Centres, Work Dynamics EMEA. "The determining factor is increasingly where sufficient power can be secured, rather than simply where demand exists. Data centres are being brought to where the power is, not the other way around."
Martin Jensen, EMEA Division President, Data Centres at JLL, said: "Europe's core markets will remain critical because enterprise demand isn't going anywhere. However, hyperscale AI infrastructure requires a completely different scale of power and land." He added that these requirements are "accelerating investment into secondary markets, greenfield developments and entirely new locations capable of supporting the next generation of AI capacity".
The Middle East pipeline
The Middle East has 2.6GW of capacity under construction and a further 13.8GW in the planning pipeline, with capacity forecast to quadruple by 2030. Sovereign-backed developments include HUMAIN's planned 100MW AI campus in Dammam and Stargate UAE's first 200MW AI facility.
Daniel Thorpe, Head of Data Centre Research, EMEA, said: "Momentum moderated over the past six months, with heightened regional risk leading several operators to defer investment decisions and extend delivery timelines. However, the region hasn't stepped back, it's re-sequenced. Timelines have been adjusted, not intentions." He added: "And because sovereign capital doesn't wait on fundraising cycles, the question here is delivery sequencing, not viability."
Outlook
JLL expects access to power to become the defining competitive advantage for developers, investors and governments seeking to attract AI infrastructure. As grid constraints persist across Europe's established hubs, markets capable of delivering large-scale power connections, planning certainty and suitable development land are expected to capture an increasing share of future investment.
These are forecasts, not outcomes. For allocators, the practical implication is that underwriting digital infrastructure increasingly turns on grid connection dates and power procurement rather than on location alone.
Reported by UKFOS from JLL's EMEA Mid-Year Data Centre Report 2026 · UKFOS editorial publication date 15 August 2026