Microscopy Europe
A Milestone for European Electron Microscopy: Microscopy Europe joins the ESFRI Roadmap 2026
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has confirmed the inclusion of Microscopy Europe in its Roadmap 2026 - one of just six new projects selected for this update after a year-and-a-half evaluation process. It is a development of considerable significance for the European electron microscopy community and one to which IMPRESS partners have actively contributed.
Microscopy Europe is an initiative to establish a pan-European distributed research infrastructure for advanced electron microscopy. It will bring together 26 advanced electron microscopy facilities across 15 European countries, with the goal of providing coordinated open access to researchers across academia and industry. The infrastructure will integrate state-of-the-art instrumentation, AI-driven automation, FAIR data management via the NOMAD platform, and computational modelling, and builds on more than seventeen years of coordinated European electron microscopy access through the ESTEEM and e-DREAM consortia.
The ESFRI Roadmap is Europe's strategic reference for the long-term development of research infrastructures, identifying those considered to be of highest strategic importance for European science. Inclusion is the outcome of a rigorous scientific and strategic evaluation.
Several IMPRESS consortium partners (AREA Science Park, CNR, FZJ, ICN2, NTNU, Promoscience, TU Graz and UAntwerp) are directly involved in Microscopy Europe as participating nodes or contributors, and the Microscopy Europe ESFRI submission explicitly cites IMPRESS as a foundational technical contribution to the initiative, particularly in the areas of instrumentation innovation and the interoperability of correlative electron microscopy techniques with complementary analytical methods.
Microscopy Europe will be officially presented at the ESFRI Roadmap 2026 launch event in Rome on 2 December 2026. With the inclusion now confirmed, the work of building the distributed infrastructure begins in earnest, with a preparation phase planned for 2027–2029.
For IMPRESS, the initiative offers a natural European-scale framework in which the scientific and technical results developed during the project can continue to thrive and grow beyond its conclusion.
The IMPRESS consortium congratulates everyone involved in shaping this initiative and looks forward to contributing to the next phase of its development.
News published on: 1 July 2026