According to the latest report by international real estate advisory firm Cushman & Wakefield, EMEA Data Centre MarketBeat H2 2025, the data centre market across the EMEA region has entered a phase of accelerated, yet increasingly selective growth. By the end of 2025, the total operational capacity of existing facilities had exceeded 11.4 GW, representing a year-on-year increase of 19%. At the same time, the capacity of projects under construction reached 2.7 GW, while a further 12.1 GW was in the planning stage, bringing the region’s total projected capacity to 26.2 GW.
The market’s continued expansion is being driven primarily by rising cloud adoption, digital sovereignty strategies, and the global race to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. As Cushman & Wakefield points out, the sector’s development is now increasingly shaped by power availability, grid connection potential, the carbon intensity of the energy mix, and the predictability of regulatory processes.
That said, the region’s so-called Powerhouse markets continue to play the dominant role. These include Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, and Milan, which joined this group after surpassing the 1 GW threshold in combined operational capacity and pipeline. Together, the six largest hubs now account for around 45% of EMEA’s operational capacity and more than 40% of its future supply. At the same time, they are facing mounting structural constraints such as land shortages, limited power availability, grid congestion, and complex regulatory frameworks. As a result, an increasing number of large-scale developments, including hyperscale campuses, are being redirected to regional and emerging markets.
Against this backdrop, Warsaw stands out in particular, having been classified as a new market with an established position. The Polish capital is therefore strengthening its role as the leading digital infrastructure hub in Central and Eastern Europe. By the end of 2025, the operational capacity of data centres in the Warsaw region had reached 157 MW, marking growth of around 10% year on year, while total capacity across Poland exceeded 210 MW. At the same time, Warsaw’s pipeline expanded by 45% to nearly 160 MW, of which 11 MW remains under construction and 148 MW is in the planning stage,” says Kamil Żach, Head of Industrial Sector at Cushman & Wakefield.
Strong economic fundamentals, a large domestic market, rapid business digitalisation, and access to highly skilled specialists are making Warsaw increasingly attractive to both colocation operators and global cloud providers. The city now serves as the main “cloud gateway” for the Central and Eastern European region, with cloud regions already established there by companies such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and OVHcloud. An additional advantage is the institutional stability resulting from Poland’s membership in both the European Union and NATO.
Despite its very promising outlook, the market is not without challenges.
The scale of investments currently under construction in Poland has declined, directly reflecting longer waiting times for grid connections, limited availability of power infrastructure, and rising construction costs. In addition, Poland’s national energy mix, which is still partly coal-based, means higher emissions-related costs for operators and greater exposure to regulatory risk. Despite these barriers, Warsaw remains the most credible large-scale data centre market in Eastern Europe,” adds Kamil Żach.
In Cushman & Wakefield’s view, it is precisely the combination of the domestic market’s scale, a mature cloud ecosystem, institutional stability, and the growing importance of the CEE region that gives the Polish capital such a strong position on the map of European digital infrastructure today.
