Final Laps at the LHC

Final laps at the LHC | CERN Skip to main content CERN Accelerating science Sign in Directory News News Topic: Accelerators Voir en français Final laps at the LHC The final physics season at the LHC has just kicked off! The experiments will record collisions until the end of June, when work will begin on transforming the machine into a high-luminosity accelerator. 7 March, 2026 | By Corinne Pralavorio LHC Page 1 on 7 March at 4:00 pm. (Image: CERN) The final laps before the major overhaul: CERN’s accelerator operators have just fired the starting pistol for the last run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At the end of June, four years of work will begin to transform the LHC into a high-luminosity accelerator (the HiLumi LHC ). For now, let’s turn our attention to the first proton collisions of the year, which were recorded by the LHC experiments on Saturday, 7 March at 15h58. After 11 years of high-energy operation, the LHC teams have acquired such expertise that it is easy to forget the complexity of this 27-kilometre-circumference machine located 100 metres underground, equipped with more than 9000 superconducting magnets, thousands of electrical circuits and hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment, and operating at ‑271 °C thanks to the world’s largest cryogenic system. “The restart of the CERN accelerator complex after the traditional winter shutdown was completed in record time,” says Matteo Solfaroli Camillocci, Head of LHC Operations. “The teams have a deep understanding of the machine and are demonstrating impressive finesse in their work. It’s a real team effort, and we are all looking forward to the last few months of operation.” Event displays from particle collisions at the LHC’s four large experiments during the beginning of the 2026 LHC run. Top: ATLAS (left) and LHCb (right). Bottom: ALICE (left) and CMS (right). (Image: CERN) Several types of collisions are on the menu for these four months of operation, which are starting with nine weeks of proton collisions and will be followed by three weeks of operation with lead ions. The 2026 run will end with two weeks of tests with high-intensity proton beams: bunches containing 40% more protons than the standard LHC bunches will be circulated to test the impact on the equipment. Following on from the tests carried out last autumn , the aim is to study the behaviour of high-intensity beams, which will be part of everyday operation at the HiLumi LHC, and to identify any unforeseen limitations before the shutdown begins. However, at such high intensities, the beams will contain a limited number of bunches, as the current accelerator and experiments cannot handle a higher load. 29 June will mark the start of four years of major work, during which part of the LHC will be dismantled and replaced with innovative equipment that is currently in production. The HiLumi LHC, which will start operating in 2030, will generate a significantly higher number of collisions than the current LHC, allowing physicists to study known mechanisms, such as the Higgs boson , in greater detail and to observe possible new, very rare phenomena. LHC HiLumi LHC LHC Run 3 Related Articles Accelerator Report: The 2026 run will be shor... Accelerators News 12 March, 2026 Machine learning to reveal more about LHC par... Physics News 18 February, 2026 Accelerator Report: Run 3 operations counting... Accelerators News 29 January, 2026 View all news Also On Accelerators Accelerator Report: The 2026 run will be shor... Accelerators News 12 March, 2026 Crystal shadowing to reduce beam losses Accelerators News 12 March, 2026 HiLumi LHC: cryogenics equipment arrives unde... Accelerators News 27 February, 2026 Accelerator Report: Protons are heading towar... Accelerators News 25 February, 2026 HiLumi LHC: full-scale tests start Accelerators Press release 23 February, 2026 Accelerator Report: The accelerator complex i... Accelerators News 12 February, 2026 Accelerator Report: Run 3 operations counting... Accelerators News 29 January, 2026 Probing asteroids with particle beams Accelerators News 21 January, 2026 Accelerator Report: A very busy technical sto... Accelerators News 16 January, 2026 View all news