Europe’s five core data centre markets reached 3.8GW of live capacity in the first half of 2026 and are on course for a record growth year, while a much larger Middle East pipeline has stalled before delivery.

Data Center Dynamics, citing JLL’s EMEA Mid-Year Data Center Report 2026, reported that Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin are expected to add another 453MW before the end of the year.

Paris led first-half growth with 75.2MW added in H1 2026, already exceeding its full-year forecast.

The contrast with the Middle East is sharp.

The region has 1.6GW of live capacity, 2.6GW in development and 13.8GW in the planning pipeline.

Regional conflict has delayed completions, but JLL still expects Middle East capacity to quadruple by 2030 because projects are being deferred rather than abandoned.

Core Markets Still Tight

Demand across FLAPD continues to outpace available supply.

Vacancy in the five markets remains at 6.4 percent, leaving limited spare capacity in Europe’s most established hubs as high-performance compute and AI training workloads require larger sites, more power and faster delivery than traditional data centres.

That pressure is changing where capacity gets built.

Greenfield developments now account for 39 percent of Europe’s future pipeline, compared with eight percent over the past three years, as land and power availability push operators beyond constrained urban markets.

Assad Noori, head of data centres, work dynamics, EMEA, at JLL, said the planning logic has shifted from proximity to population centres toward securing enough power.

“Data centers are being brought to where the power is, not the other way around,” he said.

AI Spending Drives The Capacity Race

The four largest hyperscalers are expected to spend $725 billion during 2026, a 77 percent year-on-year increase in capex.

Most of that investment is expected to go toward AI and data centre infrastructure, with AI workloads estimated to account for around half of global data centre capacity by 2030.

Martin Jensen, EMEA division president for data centres at JLL, said Europe’s core markets will remain important because enterprise demand continues, but hyperscale AI infrastructure needs a different scale of land and power.

Those requirements are accelerating investment into secondary markets, greenfield developments and new locations capable of supporting next-generation AI capacity.

For now, FLAPD is adding live capacity while the Middle East holds a far larger planned base in reserve.

The next capacity shift depends less on stated demand than on which markets can turn power, land and delayed projects into commissioned sites.