Microsoft is planning a data center in Elsdorf, Germany.

The cloud giant is set to develop a data center on a 26-hectare site, around one kilometer (0.6 miles) south of Heppendorf.

Plans for the data center were shared by the city of Elsdorf on Friday, September 12, though details about the data center itself were sparse.

“Microsoft’s arrival is a significant milestone for our small town. ‘From coal to AI’ – this development will strengthen Elsdorf economically and socially for decades to come through innovative developments and sustainable jobs,” said Mayor Andreas Heller.

DCD has contacted Microsoft and the city of Elsdorf for more information.

Elsdorf is in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis area in North Rhine-Westphalia, just west of Cologne. Positioned in the west of Germany, Microsoft is already developing data centers in nearby Bergheim and Bedburg.

Announced in November 2024, the company is to build two data centers; one on a 20-hectare site at the INKA: terra nova industrial park in Bergheim and another on an 18-hectare site at the new BEB61 industrial estate in Bedburg, both of which are hoped to go live in 2026.

The latest brings a total of three developments near Cologne. Cloud regions typically have three or more “Availability Zones” – or data centers – for redundancy reasons.

The projects follow Microsoft’s February 2024 commitment to invest €3.2 billion ($3.44bn) to double its AI infrastructure and cloud computing capacity in Germany. As well as the expansion of Microsoft’s cloud region in Frankfurt, it covered planned infrastructure in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Microsoft announced plans to launch cloud regions in Germany in 2018, with the Germany West Central Azure region – located in Frankfurt – becoming widely available in early 2021. The cloud region, when announced, was hosted in three separate data centers. The company also has the Germany North Azure region, though this is listed as “not supported,” and is paired with the West Central region.