Summary
- Five of the ten fastest-scaling markets identified by Savills are in EMEA.
- Finland has expanded 57% since 2024, Denmark 38%, France 28%, and Portugal 23%.
- Growth is shifting towards markets where power, land, and development conditions offer room beyond established European hubs.
Five of the world’s ten fastest-scaling data-centre markets are now in EMEA as developers push into regions with more room for power and physical expansion.
Savills said Finland, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, France, and Portugal all rank among the ten markets that have expanded fastest since 2024, based on its analysis of DC Byte data.
Finland and Saudi Arabia have each grown by 57%, according to Savills, while Denmark has expanded by 38%, France by 28%, and Portugal by 23%. Finland ranks third globally in the analysis and Denmark sixth.
The percentages reflect rapid scaling from smaller bases rather than a wholesale change in the hierarchy of global capacity. Savills said the US remains dominant with around 50GW of live IT power and has itself grown by 19% since 2024.
In Europe, established markets including the UK, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands continue to operate at substantially greater absolute scale than many of the faster-growing locations. Their recent growth rates are more moderate, however, as developers encounter tighter grid access, expensive land, planning constraints, and increasingly difficult development conditions.
That gap between scale and growth rate is shaping the next phase of European development. Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin retain dense customer and connectivity ecosystems, but a developer requiring several hundred megawatts cannot assume that suitable power will be available on the same timetable as land and construction.
The result is a more distributed European map. Finland and Denmark combine relatively strong renewable-generation systems with cooler climates and sites capable of supporting larger campuses. Portugal has attracted interest around high-capacity developments and international connectivity, while France combines a large domestic economy with an increasingly active regional pipeline.
Savills associate director Rupert Duckworth identified the Nordics, particularly Finland, Denmark, and Norway, as a strong proposition for AI-led development because of power costs, cleaner generation, cooler operating conditions, and fewer physical constraints.
Those advantages become more valuable as rack densities rise. Large AI deployments can require significant electrical capacity per hall and cooling systems designed around liquid rather than conventional air-only approaches. Developers therefore need locations where the power system, construction supply chain, and site layout can support infrastructure well beyond the requirements of older enterprise facilities.
The move towards secondary and emerging markets is not without constraints. Large Nordic projects still depend on grid connections and network reinforcement, while projects in southern Europe need to account carefully for cooling design, water availability, and climate exposure.
Customer location also continues to matter. Latency-sensitive enterprise and cloud workloads still benefit from proximity to major metropolitan markets and dense interconnection ecosystems. A remote site with abundant power is not automatically a substitute for capacity in London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or Paris.
Instead, Europe is developing a more specialised geography. Established hubs retain their role in connectivity-heavy and enterprise workloads, while regions with larger power allocations increasingly absorb hyperscale and AI requirements that would be difficult to accommodate inside constrained metropolitan clusters.
Savills’ figures show how quickly that redistribution can occur once projects reach operation. Finland’s 57% expansion in two years is particularly notable, even though its total capacity remains well below that of the largest global markets.
The next question is whether the fastest-growing locations can sustain their pace as their own development pipelines begin to absorb available grid and land capacity. Markets that look unconstrained at the start of a cycle can develop the same connection, planning, and community pressures already visible in Europe’s established hubs once projects move from dozens of megawatts to hundreds.
