Quantum Internet, Quantum Networking

PQI event gathers Europe’s quantum internet builders in Lisbon

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October 6, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Europe’s transition from quantum research to a functioning quantum internet took a concrete step forward on September 28-29, 2026, as the Portuguese Quantum Institute hosted the QIA Community Event 2026 in Lisbon. The two-day event convened researchers and industry leaders to accelerate deployment, and Yasser Omar, President of PQI, presented Portugal’s Quantum Innovation Strategy, positioning the nation as a key player in the developing field.

“Building a quantum Internet is one of the most fascinating scientific and technological challenges ahead,” said Omar, “opening innovation opportunities, but also ethical, security, and sovereignty issues that need to be anticipated and addressed.” The event also presented early commercial successes from companies including QBird, Welinq, Veriqloud and AQT.

European Leaders Chart Quantum Internet Transition at PQI Event

The QIA Community Event 2026, held September 28-29 at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento, Ciência Viva in Lisbon, demonstrated a shift from theoretical quantum internet research toward practical deployment strategies across Europe. The event convened a diverse group including policymakers and technology developers, focusing on accelerating the transition from experiments to functioning networks. Beyond the research discussions, companies like QBird, Welinq, and Veriqloud demonstrated viable business applications of quantum technologies, the company says.

Discussions also extended to the EuroQCI, QSNP and QR initiatives, mapping the emerging European quantum communication infrastructure and exploring how to engage future industrial users from sectors like finance and telecommunications. Stephanie Wehner, Professor and Director of QIA, emphasized the urgency of the moment, stating, “The quantum Internet in Europe is entering a new phase: from research to innovation.”

Building a quantum Internet is one of the most fascinating scientific and technological challenges ahead, opening innovation opportunities, but also ethical, security, and sovereignty issues that need to be anticipated and addressed, and Portugal should be in the front row of this new adventure.

Stephanie Wehner, Professor at TU Delft and Director of QIA
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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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