August 19, 2026, (Inside AI) — Europe’s hyperscale data centre developers are moving AI training campuses far from major cities. Average distance from urban hubs will jump to 175 kilometres between 2026 and 2028, up from 46 kilometres in the prior three years, according to new JLL data.
The shift reflects a hunt for cheaper power and land. Greenfield projects now make up 39% of Europe’s future pipeline, compared with just 8% of delivered projects. Inner-city pipeline share is expected to fall to 5% from 13%.
JLL did not name the developers, but global leaders like Meta, Google, and Microsoft are investing heavily worldwide. The trend could channel capital into underprivileged regions seeking jobs and growth, yet it also risks local opposition over habitat loss and competition for power and water.
AI training workloads require enormous electricity and water for cooling. This is redrawing the map of digital infrastructure across the continent.
Power scarcity pushes campuses to the periphery
JLL’s head of data centres for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Assad Noori, said the calculus has flipped.
“The determining factor is increasingly where sufficient power can be secured, rather than simply where demand exists,” Noori said. “Data centres are being brought to where the power is, not the other way around.”
JLL estimates the world’s four largest hyperscale cloud providers will spend $725 billion in 2026, up 77% from $410 billion in 2025. By 2030, AI workloads could account for roughly half of global data-centre capacity.
Separate data from DC Byte supports the trend. Of nine proposed gigawatt-plus capacity data centres across Europe, only one is planned near a major city, Paris. The rest are scattered from rural Spain to northern Sweden.
Core markets such as Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin remain the largest. But they face land shortages, planning restrictions and long grid connection waits.
“Europe’s core markets will remain critical because enterprise demand isn’t going anywhere,” said Martin Jensen, president of JLL’s EMEA data centres division.
“Hyperscale AI infrastructure requires a completely different scale of power and land,” he added.
Land prices reveal a stark three-tier market
JLL data shows powered land costs an average €2.36 million per megawatt of IT load in core markets. Secondary cities like Copenhagen, Warsaw and Milan average €978,000. Tertiary areas such as Bordeaux average €512,000, with costs as low as €200,000.
Amsterdam remains the most expensive market at roughly €2.7 million per megawatt, followed by London at €2.6 million and Frankfurt at €2.5 million.
Rupert Duckworth, associate director for EMEA data-centre advisory at Savills, explained London’s constraints.
“London has already seen significant digital infrastructure development driven by cloud and has other asset classes competing for space leading to high land prices. Power is now constrained in the key cloud locations across the market,” Duckworth said.
The migration to rural and post-industrial sites is not frictionless. Local communities may welcome investment, but environmental groups warn about water use in drought-prone regions and the loss of natural habitats. Grid operators must also build new transmission lines quickly, a process that often faces its own regulatory delays.
For developers, the trade-off is clear: cheaper land and faster power access in exchange for greater distance from enterprise customers. For Europe, the result is a new geography of AI infrastructure, one that stretches far beyond the traditional digital hubs.
