Sovereign infrastructure spend to triple in Europe as fifth of workloads stay local

Gartner says global spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure will climb 35% over the next year

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Spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure in Europe will triple from 2025 to 2027, according to Gartner, with a fifth of workloads shifting to local clouds.

Analysis from the consultancy suggests worldwide sovereign cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) spending will hit $80 billion this year — up 35% from 2025.

The projection comes as Europe pushes for digital sovereignty amid geopolitical concerns and worries about overreliance on US-based big tech providers.

But it's not just Europe and the UK. Indeed, between 2025 and 2026, Gartner said European sovereign cloud spend will climb 83% from $6.9bn to $12.6bn – that growth rate is pipped by both the Middle East and Africa (89%) and the region Gartner dubs Mature Asia/Pacific (87%).

While European spending remains high – and is tipped to triple over three years to top North America at $23.1bn – the region with the highest spend on sovereign cloud remains China.

Spending in the region came in at $37.5bn spent in 2025, and Gartner forecasts this to rise to $48.4bn in 2026 and $58.5bn in 2027, with growth around 20%.

"As geopolitical tensions rise, organizations outside the US and China are investing more in sovereign cloud IaaS to gain digital and technological independence," said Rene Buest, senior director analyst at Gartner.

"The goal is to keep wealth generation within their own borders to strengthen the local economy."

Sovereign spend

Most of that spending will be from the public purse via governments, Gartner found.

Alongside the pan-European Gaia cloud, France is even shifting digital services such as video calling to locally-made products over Zoom or Microsoft Teams via the Suite Numérique project.

"Governments will remain the main buyers to meet digital sovereignty needs, followed by regulated industries and critical infrastructure organizations, such as energy and utilities and telecommunications," Buest commented.

In Europe, AWS, IBM, Google and more have all pushed sovereign cloud services via heavy investment in European infrastructure – though Microsoft has had to reassure customers that their data really will be safe from American eyes.

"To compete for local customers’ cloud business, large cloud providers must seriously acknowledge the sovereignty concerns and requirements per country, and act accordingly," added Buest.

"Solely treating digital sovereignty as a pure security, regulatory and compliance topic is not enough."

Keeping it local

The shift to "geopatriation projects," as Gartner has dubbed them, means about a fifth of existing workloads will shift from global cloud providers to local ones, the analyst house predicted.

The consultancy added that 80% of sovereign cloud spend will come from new digital projects, including shifting legacy workloads to the cloud.

Unsurprisingly, Synergy research suggests US companies dominate the European cloud market, with local providers scrapping over just 15% of the remaining market.

Although the recent shift to sovereign IaaS spending could help rebalance that, there's plenty of work to be done.

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Freelance journalist Nicole Kobie first started writing for ITPro in 2007, with bylines in New Scientist, Wired, PC Pro and many more.

Nicole the author of a book about the history of technology, The Long History of the Future.