European Solar Telescope reaches major milestone with ESFRI Landmark status

The European Solar Telescope (EST) has been granted ESFRI Landmark status by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), marking an important step in the development of the next generation of European solar research.

The University of Sheffield is playing a leading role in the UK contribution to EST through the UK Universities Consortium (UKUC), which brings together researchers and institutions from across the UK and is led by the university.

The decision was adopted at ESFRI’s 97th meeting, held in Cork on 23–24 September 2026. EST was first included in the ESFRI Roadmap as a project in 2016.

The new landmark status recognises EST’s progress towards construction, its scientific ambition and the role it is expected to play within Europe’s research infrastructure landscape.

ESFRI Landmarks are research infrastructures that are already operating or have reached an advanced stage of implementation. Once built, EST will give astronomers an unprecedented view of the sun and the processes that shape its atmosphere and influence the near-Earth space environment.

By providing detailed observations from the ground, EST will complement observations from space missions and provide crucial data to help researchers understand solar phenomena that can affect space weather.

Coordinated by the EST Foundation, with strong support and commitment from the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), EST brings together institutions from across Europe.

The EST Foundation is steering the project through its current phase and preparing the next steps towards construction. The telescope will provide European researchers with access to a shared observing facility designed to address scientific questions that existing instruments cannot yet fully answer.

Manuel Collados, EST Coordinator, IAC explains: “EST is, by its very nature, a European project. No single institution or country could undertake an infrastructure of this scale and ambition alone. Its recognition as an ESFRI Landmark is therefore a recognition of the strength of the European partnership that has been built around the project. The task before us now is to turn that shared scientific ambition into the long-term commitments needed to bring EST into construction”.

Professor Robertus Erdélyi, from the Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre (SP2RC) at the University of Sheffield and Coordinator of UKUC, said: “Reaching this milestone is the result of years of excellent work by many people and institutions in the UK and across Europe. To support and advance EST, the UK Universities Consortium (UKUC) has been formed and is led by the University of Sheffield. UKUC was able to get both institutional and research council (STFC/UKRI) funding to support the project.”

The UKUC brings together researchers and institutions from across the UK, including the Universities of Sheffield, Aberystwyth, Durham, Exeter, Glasgow and Queen’s University Belfast, as well as the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Héctor Socas-Navarro, Director of the EST Foundation, said: “Becoming an ESFRI Landmark is a major milestone for EST. It is a recognition of the European relevance of this research infrastructure. The EST community has built, over many years, a remarkable European collaboration around a common scientific goal. Landmark status recognises the maturity and strategic relevance that the project has now reached within the European research infrastructure landscape.”

EST will be built at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain. Its 4.2-metre-class mirror and advanced instruments are designed to observe the solar atmosphere at multiple heights simultaneously and across different wavelengths.

This will allow researchers to follow the emergence and evolution of magnetic fields at the solar surface and investigate how energy is transported through the solar atmosphere.

These processes are fundamental to understanding solar activity, including the mechanisms that drive solar eruptions. The sun is the only star whose surface and lower atmosphere can be observed in such detail, making it a unique laboratory for studying fundamental physical processes.

EST will provide observations at scales and levels of detail that complement those possible from solar space missions. Together, ground- and space-based observations will help researchers build a more complete picture of how the sun works — and how activity on our nearest star can affect the space environment around Earth.

The ESFRI Landmark status represents an important step towards making that capability a reality and strengthens the case for EST as a major European research infrastructure for the coming decades.