Left: Recorded and delivered integrated luminosity in Pb-Pb @ 5.36 TeV, 2026

Right: Recorded integrated luminosity in Pb-Pb @ 5.36 TeV, 2023/2024/2025/2026 comparison

CERN News (15 June 2026): Final collisions, new horizons

On Sunday (14 June 2026) morning at 5h37 a.m., our LHC Run 3 data taking came to its scheduled conclusion. The LHC will continue with two weeks of machine development for the High-Luminosity LHC, before Long Shutdown 3 officially begins on 29 June at 6h00 a.m.

During the final Pb-Pb running period, we recorded an additional 1.83 nb⁻¹ of integrated luminosity at a maximum interaction rate of 23 kHz, leveled for roughly six hours during typical eight-hour fills. This brings our total Run 3 Pb-Pb data set to 6.9 nb⁻¹, successfully reaching the original Run 3 goal. In other terms, this corresponds to approximately 53 billion zero-bias Pb-Pb collisions recorded in continuous readout.

These data complement the successful pp campaign of Run 3: an integrated luminosity of over 150 pb⁻¹ of pp collisions was inspected via the use of software triggers. Further, the entire zero-bias pp data collected in 2026 of about 25 pb⁻¹, corresponding to more than 1.5 trillion reconstructed collisions, is available in full as thinned, first-pass AO2D for general-purpose analyses as well.

ALICE enters Long Shutdown 3 with an unprecedented amount of data. Over the coming years, these data will enable a broad physics programme, from precision studies of the quark-gluon plasma and hadronic interactions to the rich QCD programme in pp collisions that was outlined before Run 3. The next milestones will be discussed at the ALICE Week in July 2026, where we will review progress in data processing and physics analyses, and look ahead to the FoCal, ITS3, and ALICE 3 upgrades.