At the opening of the 2026 European Ocean Days, President Ursula von der Leyen announced OceanEye, a new European ocean monitoring and observation initiative that will reinforce global efforts to understand and protect the ocean. The EU will contribute €50 million from Horizon Europe in 2026–2027 and is calling for an international alliance to secure long‑term funding and coordination of a truly global ocean observing system.

OceanEye will strengthen Europe’s capacity to:

• Collect the data needed to understand the state of the ocean.
• Predict and mitigate climate change impacts and extreme events affecting coasts and communities.
• Support innovation, competitiveness and maritime security across the blue economy.

At the core of OceanEye lies the European Digital Twin of the Ocean, a high‑resolution digital replica of the ocean that will integrate observations, models and advanced computing to provide interactive simulations and decision‑support tools, with full operational capability targeted for 2030.

For EurOcean, which works to make marine knowledge more accessible and useful for decision‑making and public awareness in Europe, initiatives such as OceanEye and the Digital Twin of the Ocean will greatly expand the volume and quality of ocean information available to science, policy and society. EurOcean will follow the development of OceanEye closely and continue to highlight opportunities for Europe’s marine community to engage with and benefit from this new era of ocean observation.

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