The 2025 GÉANT Compendium of NRENs Report was released Monday 8 June, at the start of TNC26 in Helsinki. It is the second in a new style of Compendium Reports, designed as companion pieces to the full Compendium data which has been accessible online since 11 February 2026.
This year, the Report is packed with spotlights from a variety of NRENs across Europe, filling in the background and providing additional context to their Compendium survey responses. Information about the NRENs as organisations is always a highlight for readers and 2025 brought some welcome additions, including the return of an old question about NREN expenditure. Standout spotlights including one from the Irish NREN Asiera (still known as HEANet in 2025) explaining how their expenditure has changed in the last decade as well as one from the Republic of North Macedonian NREN MARnet, describing their commercial income stream, feature in the first chapter of the Report.
The Report also provides space for an explanation of large changes in the responses from individual NRENs from one year to the next. CSC from Finland, and Pro-M from Hungary, explain how, respectively, a change in approach to responding to the Compendium survey, and a change in body responsible for the NREN, have resulted in big jumps in how the budget and staffing of these NRENs looks in the data. This extra context is vital in ensuring that Compendium data is not misinterpreted.
And there’s plenty to celebrate: the Italian NREN GARR has been consistently expanding its dark fibre network, through a decade where many other NREN networks remained more static in size, while the Slovakian NREN SANET has recently scaled their backbone capacity. More spotlights cover EU investment in data centres, expansions in the provision of advanced computing services, and the important role of recruitment to an NREN, plus many more topics all of which can be found in the new Report.
One of the strengths of the Compendium is its long-term view: questions asked consistently over many years allow us to gradually reveal trends and changes, which would otherwise go unnoticed. Some thoughtful curation is necessary to ensure that questions remain relevant. For example, 2025 saw the revision of the network section to remove some outdated questions, however the historic responses remain on the website.
