QCI Days 2025, a pivotal event in European quantum communications

 

Over 300 participants joined the event, more than 70 distinguished speakers from 30+ countries contributed to an outstanding program. The first good news is: EuroQCI is in progress. And the second good news is: you can review the session in the livestream!

 

What we will remember

Building upon the foundations laid by the QKD Days in Madrid (2022) and the QCI Days Vienna (2024), QCI Days 2025 gave a comprehensive and detailed status on the advances of the development of the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI).

The 3-day program was packed with interesting sessions and panels, networking breaks and demos spotlighted by Greece’s dynamic contribution to the European quantum-secure future, showcasing national expertise, strategic vision and strong industry-academia collaboration.

The event was greatly coordinated by GRNET (HellasQCI), the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology (QCI-CAT), and the Technical University of Madrid (EuroQCI Spain). It provided a platform for stakeholders from national communication infrastructures, the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), and various quantum-centered projects such as Nostradamus and Petrus to discuss innovations, share use cases, and plan the next steps for EuroQCI.

ID Quantique contributed to a couple of technical sessions, was very proud to have been mentioned by several speakers and and as a premium sponsor of the event to have contributed to a stunning live QKD demo and to offering an amazing movie experience at the Planetarium to the participants!

 

Program highlights

In the opening keynote, Artur Ekert emphasized efforts to be made quickly on mitigating risks of exposure of private or sensitive data that need to be kept private for decades. Pointing attacks such as “harvest now decrypt later” as an extremely serious problem already today, he urged to start the migration and the adoption of quantum cyber security solutions with no delay.

 

Day 1: A Deep Dive into the EuroQCI Initiatives: it’s well in progress!
The opening day featured presentations from European and national stakeholders, showcasing the vision and progress of each National QCI initiative. As the first phase of the EuroQCI approaches completion, it was fascinating to witness the concrete results reached within the first 2 years of implementation,

One highlight was the impressive large-scale networks designed in Poland and Romania over 1770kms and 1500 kms, where IDQ’s QKD systems have been selected.

Projects leaders also shared their future plans for the Cross border phase called “Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)”. What was also remarkable was the spirit of collaboration that defines the EuroQCI ecosystem, where leaders from the 27 countries have been working together to submit their proposals for the new phase starting in 2026.

If you want to know more about the presentations, you can contact us or watch the livestream here.

 

Day 2: Spotlight on European Innovation: it’s a community effort to scale up
The second day focused on the latest developments from QKD manufacturers and one of the topics discussed was the different levels of product maturity and availability.

Jean-Robert Morax, Director of Product Management at IDQ gave an overview of the industrial journey of ID Quantique from a creating supply chain, manufacturing line and all related automation, quality and support processes that have ensured reproducibility and scalability of both our 4^th generation of QKD systems and our Q-KMS.

Another highlight was the session discussing the Security Perspective of QKD, where leaders urged action to accelerate QKD certification, which poses problems for classified data in Europe. As part of the EuroQCI initiatives, leaders presented the state of progress of 2 key projects during the conference.
1) Nostradamus is a recent initiative led by Deutsche Telekom, Thales and AIT which primarily aims to develop a standardized testing environment for QKD devices to assess their security and interoperability.

2)​ Petrus’s role is to facilitate collaboration, interoperability of the technologies and to  align efforts across members states to ensure a harmonized deployment of quantum communication networks across the EU including its overseas territories.​ It includes Identifying standardization needs.

> Read about IDQ’s QKD First certification

The day concluded with a fun networking reception at the Planetarium, sponsored by IDQ, a good opportunity for participants to foster collaboration amongst participants.

 

Day 3: The Future of Quantum Connectivity: Quantum will surprise us!
The final day explored the potential of cross-border quantum connectivity and the integration of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) with QKD.

On the photonics side, it was highlighted that that ultra-low-noise SNSPDs and SPADs could play an important role to bridge the extra long distance QKD solutions that some of the networks will require in the next phase. At IDQ, we have developed performance-leading detectors to address this challenge.

>Explore IDQ’s quantum detection systems

Discussions centered on how quantum technologies are transforming industries such as telecommunications and data centers. Speakers from Telefonica and BT shared their companies’ journey on the migration to quantum-security. Joining the panel, IDQ’s Jean-Sebastien Pegon explained what it takes for a customer to embrace the existing solutions, describing the steps to consider becoming quantum-ready, showing implementing QKD is not as complex as it seems.

The event wrapped up the day with a future looking session where experts leading 6 projects shared key insights highlighting Europe’s collaborative momentum towards quantum-resilient connectivity from Earth to space.

 

Highlighting Greece’s Role in Quantum Communication

Greece, through the HellasQCI project, plays a pivotal role in the EuroQCI initiative. The HellasQCI Quantum Communication Network comprises over 650 kilometers of optical fibers and 13 government nodes equipped with secure communication capabilities using IDQ’s Clavis XG systems.

 

Conclusion

QCI Days 2025 highlighted that quantum communication technologies are of strategic importance for the digital sovereignty of Europe and as stated by Dimitris Katsianis, Deputy Chairman of GRNET and Ass. Professor at NKUA in his closing remarks: “while efforts should continue to accelerate, trust and collaboration are at the heart of Europe’s quantum future”.

We want to thank and congratulate the leaders of the event Ilias Papastamatiou – GRNET, from HellasQCI, Vicente Martin – UPM, from EuroQCISpain and Martin Stierle – AIT, from QCICAT for this well-organized conference and incredible live demonstrations. After the completion of phase1, we look forward to contributing to the next phase of EuroQCI _ phase 2.

 

Read more about EuroQCI

 

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