2024 holds special significance for CERN, as it celebrated its 70th anniversary. To mark this major milestone, the Organization held a series of public events in the CERN Science Gateway around the overarching themes: Unveiling the Universe, Exploring Farther: Machines for New Knowledge, Virtuous Circle of Knowledge and Innovation and Extraordinary Human Endeavour. It also held a CERN70 Community Event and an Official Ceremony for Heads of State and Government, along with celebrations organised in the Member and Associate Member States across the globe. The Office for Alumni Relations hosted its Third Collisions event, a major reunion that welcomed 600 alumni at CERN.

This year, CERN experiments have continued Unveiling the Universe by pushing the boundaries of our understanding. The ATLAS and CMS experiments observed quantum entanglement at the highest energy yet at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), opening up a new perspective on the complex world of quantum physics. The ATLAS experiment harnessed machine learning to gain new insights into Higgs self-interaction, and the CMS experiment achieved the most precise measurement of the W boson mass to date. The ALICE experiment conducted the famous double-slit experiment and found the first ever evidence of the heaviest antimatter hypernucleus at the LHC. The LHCb experiment released its full data from LHC Run 1, thus giving open access to a wide range of physics studies, and probed new searches for matter–antimatter asymmetry. The BASE experiment successfully transported a box filled with unbonded protons across CERN’s main site, thus demonstrating that the same feat could later be possible for antiprotons. The AegIS experiment paved the way for a new set of antimatter studies by cooling positronium with laser light for the first time. Other experiments, such as AMBER explored dark matter searches, SHiP set sail to explore the hidden sector and NA62 observed an ultra-rare particle decay. CLOUD resolved mysteries about aerosol particles emitted by tropical rainforests, and MoEDAL set new limits on the mass of magnetic monopole, considerably narrowing the search window for these hypothetical particles.

In 2024, the LHC more than fulfilled its role of Exploring Farther: Machines for New Knowledge by having its most efficient year of operation to date, with record physics data delivered. The experiments are upgrading their detectors in preparation for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), where the project teams successfully completed the installation of inner-triplet test string magnets and tests of the cold powering system.

CERN’s innovations have reverberated far beyond particle physics exemplifying the Virtuous Circle of Knowledge and Innovation. CERN brought together key stakeholders in global health and one of the flagship projects known as STELLA is re-engineering radiotherapy to make it accessible for low- and middle-income countries. A collaboration with EUROfusion is driving forward innovative technologies for future colliders and nuclear fusion reactors. AI-driven projects like Edge SpAIce will help tackle marine plastic pollution, leveraging CERN’s expertise in data management, and the White Rabbit Collaboration has launched a new open-source technology to sync devices in the accelerators down to sub-nanoseconds, promising applications far beyond particle physics. The Organization also celebrated the first anniversary of CERN Venture Connect initiative, a launchpad for deep-tech startups, and the tenth anniversary of the CERN and Society Foundation.

CERN inaugurated a new data centre with integrated heat-recovery system to address the data-processing needs of the worldwide scientific community and launched the Next-Generation Triggers project to significantly increase the efficiency, sensitivity and modelling of the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

CERN has reaffirmed its commitment to environmentally responsible research with a strategic partnership with ABB that helps identify an energy-saving potential of 17.4% across cooling and ventilation motors and introduces a novel approach using carbon dioxide cooling technology in order to minimise the Laboratory’s carbon footprint.

CERN’s Extraordinary Human Endeavour expanded as Estonia became the 24th Member State. The CERN Council appointed Professor Mark Thomson as the next Director-General, starting in 2026, and Professor Costas Fountas as the next President.

Having marked seven decades of discovery in 2024, CERN now looks forward to another 70 extraordinary years of scientific research and global collaboration and welcomes 2025, the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.