Connection timelines for new data centers to the power grid in FLAPD (the largest commercial data center hubs in Europe: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin) are now sliding past 2030, note experts at real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle in their H1 2026 report.
A direct consequence has been rising prices for powered land in FLAPD: compared to 2021, prices have climbed 82 percent, reaching €2.26 million per megawatt.
The resource shortage is already affecting supply. In Frankfurt, the data center vacancy rate fell to 4.6 percent by the end of Q2 2026, the lowest in FLAPD. The market has essentially moved to a pre-leasing model, with capacity largely spoken for before construction even begins: according to a report by CBRE, roughly 77 percent of data center capacity brought online since the start of 2026 had already been booked in prior years under pre-lease agreements (pre-lets), up 10 percentage points from 2025.
Against this backdrop, European cities and regions outside the "big five" accounted for a record 55 percent of all new data center leasing take-up. Demand is spilling over into other European markets considered secondary and tertiary by the industry: Groningen (Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium), Barcelona (Spain), and Norway. These new locations are drawing operators with accessible, relatively cheap electricity.
