Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to share the first 2026 edition of the EP newsletter with you, in my new role as EP Department Head.

CERN’s new management took office in January, with a revised structure of Sectors and Departments. In EP, we reorganised the LHC experiments’ groups with the aim of improving communication and adapting their structure to the upcoming Long Shutdown 3 and HL-LHC challenges. The scope and mandate of the EP Department remain unchanged, and its organisation can be consulted here.

As I write, almost all experimental facilities are in full swing, harvesting data that will hopefully yield interesting Physics results. ISOLDE is a notable exception, as it already started its consolidation and improvement programme, anticipating the Long Shutdown 3 period.

As is tradition by now, Panos Charitos, our EP newsletter curator, has prepared an interesting mix of articles, summarising recent achievements in the experiments, reporting on the very successful ROOT and FCC Physics workshops, and interviewing major personalities in our field.

Whether you are interested in the long trip of the CMS HgCal CE-H absorber structure through three continents, or the short trip of antimatter on CERN premises, whether you wish to dig into the promise of machine learning based particle flow techniques or better understand the importance of the β-detector nuclear magnetic resonance technique for solid-state batteries research, whether you are intrigued as to how ALICE solved the “survival puzzle” of fragile light nuclei or curious about the latest attempts to challenge the SM though the measurement of rare decays or detection of “forbidden” flavour-changing processes, you will find food for thought in this newsletter.

I wish you a happy reading,
Giovanna