Europe's creative industries deserve world-class connectivity. 6G Holonet delivers it.
The way we connect, create, and experience the world is changing. Audiences expect immersive, real-time experiences. Creators need infrastructure that keeps up. And Europe’s cultural and media sectors, from concert halls to museums, from studios to festivals, need connectivity that works for them, not against them.
6G-HOLONET is a European research and innovation project building exactly that. We design, validate, and demonstrate advanced 5G and pre-6G media applications across three sectors where the stakes are high and the potential is enormous: live entertainment, cultural heritage, and immersive media production.
Our mission is straightforward: turn next-generation network technology into real, usable, scalable solutions, developed openly, deployed across Europe, and built to last beyond the life of the project.
- WHY 6G Holonet
Real pilots. Real impact. AI-powered immersive media built on sovereign European 6G infrastructure.
This is not a lab experiment. 6G-HOLONET runs live pilots across nine sites in four countries, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, with real audiences, real venues, and real cultural institutions. Every technology we develop is tested where it matters most: in the field.
The problem we’re solving is concrete. Across media, entertainment, and cultural heritage, demand for immersive experiences is growing fast but the infrastructure to deliver them remains expensive, rigid, and out of reach for most organizations:
6G-HOLONET changes this. By combining AI-native network orchestration, edge computing, open APIs, and advanced holographic rendering, we make it possible to deploy immersive media in real-world settings at a fraction of today’s cost and complexity. And critically, we do this on European infrastructure, contributing to the digital sovereignty that Europe’s creative economy depends on.
The opportunity is real and growing. The global immersive entertainment market is projected to reach $442 billion by 2030. Europe’s cultural heritage tourism sector is growing at 16% annually. 6G-HOLONET exists to make sure European organizations broadcasters, venues, museums, SMEs are equipped to lead, not follow.
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Volumetric video capture is still confined to specialist studios with heavy, fixed rigs.
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Live venues struggle to provide the connectivity fans now expect — multi-angle streaming, AR overlays, real-time interaction.
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Museums and heritage sites want to open their collections to digital audiences, but lack flexible, non-invasive infrastructure to do so.
Six objectives.
One shared ambition.
6G-HOLONET is structured around six clear objectives that take the project from research to real-world impact:
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Define business-driven use cases Working directly with broadcasters, live venues, museums, and creative producers to identify where 6G technologies can have the greatest practical and commercial impact.
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Develop next-generation technical enablers Building the core 6G capabilities — ultra-low latency streaming, AI-native network orchestration, volumetric rendering, and open APIs — that make immersive media applications possible.
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Integrate and validate in the lab Testing and refining all components in controlled environments before real-world deployment, ensuring interoperability and performance readiness.
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Deploy and demonstrate in the real world Running live pilots across four countries — Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom — across nine sites and four distinct use cases, with real audiences and real stakeholders.
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Build open, modular, and reusable frameworks Releasing open-source tools, APIs, and modules so that the results of 6G-HOLONET can be reused by other projects, sectors, and organisations across Europe.
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Maximise dissemination, exploitation, and standardisation Ensuring that what we learn reaches the right people — through publications, events, policy recommendations, and contributions to international standards bodies including 3GPP, O-RAN, and ETSI.
Backed by Europe. Built for Europe.
6G-HOLONET is funded under Horizon Europe, the European Union’s research and innovation programme, through the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU). It responds to the call HORIZON-JU-SNS-2025-STREAM-D, which focuses on large-scale trials and pilots that bring together vertical industries and network technology providers to validate 6G at real-world scale.
The SNS JU was established to secure Europe’s leadership in 6G — the next generation of mobile connectivity that will underpin digital infrastructure across the continent well into the 2030s. 6G-HOLONET is part of this broader European effort, sitting at the intersection of network innovation and creative industries.
The project builds on results from earlier SNS Stream A and Stream B projects, maturing proven technologies into large-scale deployments. It contributes directly to Europe’s strategic goals for digital sovereignty, competitive industry, and inclusive access to next-generation services — as set out in the EU’s Digital Decade policy objectives and the European Commission’s 2024 White Paper on digital infrastructure.
6G-HOLONET is a consortium of 18 partners spanning industry, research, academia, and public institutions across Europe.