CERN completes eight new magnets for its upgraded particle collider
CERN says eight superconducting quadrupole magnets for the High-Luminosity LHC have passed testing and are ready for installation.
Photo credit and license
Photo: Julian Herzog / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CERN_LHC_Tunnel1.jpg; no modifications · Image source · License: CC BY-SA 3.0CERN announced on 28 October 2026 that all eight of its new superconducting quadrupole magnets intended for the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider have been completed and validated. Two spare units are also ready. The milestone follows years of design, fabrication and testing of equipment that will help focus particle beams more tightly near the ATLAS and CMS experiments.
The magnets use niobium-tin superconducting technology, rather than the niobium-titanium design used for existing LHC quadrupoles. According to CERN, each new magnet has a 7.2-metre magnetic length and a nominal peak field of 11.3 tesla. The higher field and a larger aperture are intended to improve beam focusing and support more collisions for scientific analysis.
CERN said the magnets are not being installed immediately. The first are expected to be lowered into the tunnel in 2028, during the accelerator upgrade. Other components are being produced by international partners, including teams in Spain and the United States. Completion of these eight magnets is an important manufacturing and testing milestone, not a claim that the whole High-Luminosity LHC upgrade is finished.
