Digital Realty Expands to Lisbon for Subsea Data Centre

Digital Realty is expanding its Southern European footprint with the acquisition of a data centre facility in Lisbon, marking its entry into Portugal and reinforcing subsea connectivity routes that underpin global data centre traffic.

Lisbon acts as Europe’s Atlantic gateway, providing low-latency connectivity to the Americas. The Lisbon facility supports up to 2.4 MW of IT load. Several strategic network service providers are already connected, giving the site immediate interconnection value. 

Portugal is positioned on the Iberian Peninsula and is gaining attention as a digital and interconnection hub. Industry investment in subsea cable infrastructure supports this position. Portugal connects Europe with North America, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia through these systems.

Subsea proximity and reduced latency

Previously, subsea-related deployments route through Digital Realty’s facilities in Madrid. By establishing a facility in Lisbon, the company reduces latency and positions infrastructure closer to cable landing stations.

The selected site is the closest data centre to the submarine cable landings in Carcavelos. This enables support for landing solutions and the hosting of termination equipment for subsea cable infrastructure.

Portugal is the only location in Europe with direct subsea connectivity to South America. It also serves as a gateway for West Africa and adds route diversity to the Mediterranean subsea network. Route diversity reduces the risk of disruption by providing alternative paths for traffic. Sixteen subsea cables land in Portugal, most near Lisbon.

Paula Cogan, Managing Director of EMEA at Digital Realty, says: “Adding Portugal to our portfolio represents a key piece of our Iberian strategy.

“This expansion strengthens interconnection across our platform and gives customers unparalleled choice and agility as they scale their businesses globally.”

Paula highlights the role of Lisbon in strengthening interconnection across Digital Realty’s platform. The company’s model centres on PlatformDIGITAL, its global data centre platform that enables customers to deploy infrastructure in multiple metros while maintaining consistent connectivity and operational standards.

Building an Iberian interconnection platform

Digital Realty’s Lisbon facility is expected to be ready for service in early 2027. Alongside the acquired asset, the company prepares for future expansion and campus development. 

The Lisbon data centre connects via subsea cables to Digital Realty campuses in Accra in Ghana, Lagos in Nigeria and Cape Town in South Africa. This strengthens digital corridors between Europe and Africa, supporting enterprise, cloud and content providers operating across both regions.

The Portugal expansion complements Digital Realty’s presence in Spain. The company operates four data centres in Madrid, described as the primary inland digital hub of Southern Europe. It also plans to launch service in Barcelona in mid-2026. Barcelona acts as a Mediterranean gateway with subsea connectivity to Africa, the Middle East and other regions.

Together, Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona form an interconnected platform across the Iberian Peninsula. This creates options for geographic redundancy for data centre customers.

The growth of AI workloads is reshaping data flows between continents. AI workloads require high-capacity infrastructure and rapid data movement between training clusters, inference engines and end users. 

Lisbon’s access to major subsea cable systems and regional connectivity positions it to host next-generation AI infrastructure.

By situating capacity close to cable landings and linking it to established campuses in Spain and Africa, Digital Realty aligns its Iberian strategy with evolving hyperscale and enterprise requirements for low-latency and high-resilience digital infrastructure.