ETH Campus Heilbronn: Contracts signed

On Monday, 15 December 2025, ETH President Joël Mesot travelled with a university delegation to Heilbronn, where he signed the contracts between ETH Zurich and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation. This clears the way for the first professorships to be filled.

Over the course of 2025, the operational company “ETH Zurich Campus Heilbronn gGmbH” began work, an architectural competition enabled us to see what the buildings that ETH will occupy in the future will look like, and with the approval of the professorship profiles, the ETH Executive Board outlined the academic profile of the university in Heilbronn.

Reflections on signing

Joël Mesot looks back on a year of intensive preparation: “With the construction of a campus in Baden-Württemberg, we are literally entering uncharted territory.

Many ETH members have been working flat out to find solutions to completely new legal and organisational issues. I would like to thank them and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation for the trust they are placing in our university.”

Reinhold R. Geilsdörfer, Managing Director of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, sees the ecosystem continuing to grow: “What we have set the seal on today will greatly strengthen our innovation ecosystem. When the first ETH researchers begin their work here in 2026, they will experience an environment unparalleled in Europe – with university and research partners such as TUM and the Fraunhofer Institute and, above all, our Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence in the immediate vicinity. Heilbronn is sending a clear signal today: we are ready for cutting-edge international research.”