With the LHC increasingly pointing toward the “Nightmare Scenario,” is the €20 billion Future Circular Collider (FCC) being built to answer important physics questions, or is it simply a case of scientists refusing to let go after decades of investment?

I’ve been following the recent discussions around the 2026 European Strategy for Particle Physics, and one thing that stands out is the huge support for the Future Circular Collider (FCC). But the more I read about the current state of particle physics, the more I feel like there’s an uncomfortable question nobody wants to talk about.

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built, scientists were almost certain it would discover something important. The Standard Model predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, and without it, the theory didn’t really work. The LHC found the Higgs exactly as expected.

But since then, things have been very different. Years of data from the LHC have failed to find many of the new particles and theories that physicists hoped for. No supersymmetry, no extra dimensions, and no clear signs of dark matter particles. Instead, the Standard Model has continued to survive every test.

So my question for physicists is this:

Is there a similar reason to be confident about the FCC, or are we spending around €20 billion on a machine without any guarantee that it will discover something fundamentally new?

Why isn’t there more support for alternatives like a Muon Collider, which could reach higher energies more efficiently, or for precision experiments involving neutrinos and other smaller-scale projects? Is the FCC still the best path forward, or are we continuing down this route because it is the approach the field is most comfortable with?

More broadly, has particle physics become too focused on the idea that bigger colliders will eventually reveal new physics, even though many of the predictions based on concepts like naturalness have not appeared so far?