Digital Realty Expands Data Center Presence to Portugal

Digital Realty has entered the Portuguese market through the acquisition of a data center facility in Lisbon, expanding its footprint in Southern Europe and strengthening global connectivity infrastructure. The facility will support up to 2.4 MW of IT load and is expected to become operational in early 2027.

Strategic Location for Global Connectivity
Portugal has emerged as a major digital gateway due to its growing subsea cable infrastructure linking Europe with North America, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Lisbon serves as Europe’s Atlantic connectivity hub, offering low-latency routes to the Americas.

Sixteen submarine cable systems currently land in Portugal, most of them near Lisbon. The newly acquired facility is located close to the cable landing station in Carcavelos, positioning it as the nearest data center site capable of hosting subsea termination equipment and supporting landing solutions.

Previously, subsea-related connectivity for Digital Realty customers in the region was routed through its Madrid facilities. Establishing a presence in Lisbon reduces latency and places infrastructure closer to cable landing points, improving performance for transcontinental data traffic.

Strengthening Europe–Africa Digital Corridors
The Lisbon data center will be connected through subsea infrastructure to Digital Realty campuses in Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Cape Town, South Africa. These connections reinforce digital corridors between Europe and Africa and support increasing data exchange across the Atlantic and African regions.

The new site complements Digital Realty’s existing infrastructure in Spain, where the company operates four data centers in Madrid and plans to launch a new facility in Barcelona in mid-2026. Together, Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona will form an interconnected regional platform across the Iberian Peninsula.

Infrastructure for AI-Driven Data Traffic
Growing demand for AI workloads is increasing global data movement between cloud regions, training clusters and inference locations. Lisbon’s position as a transatlantic connectivity hub, combined with its access to major subsea cable systems, makes it a suitable location for distributed AI infrastructure.

Digital Realty plans to develop the Lisbon facility as part of a broader campus strategy, supporting scalable data center capacity and expanding the interconnection ecosystem for cloud providers, network operators and enterprise customers.

By integrating Lisbon into its global platform, Digital Realty aims to enhance connectivity diversity, reduce latency on transatlantic routes and support the next generation of data-intensive applications.

Edited by Industrial Journalist, Romila DSilva – AI Powered