QCI-CAT Stakeholder Event: Three Years of Progress Towards Quantum-Secure Communication
On 26 February 2026, the QCI-CAT consortium welcomed stakeholders from research, industry, public administration and critical infrastructure to Vienna for the project’s final Stakeholder Event. The event marked an important milestone as the first phase of the national EuroQCI initiative approaches its conclusion.
Participants looked back on three years of intensive research and development, presenting the key results achieved within QCI-CAT and discussing the next steps towards implementing quantum-secure communication in Austria and Europe.
The programme included presentations from consortium partners and Austrian stakeholders, highlighting the progress made in building a nationwide demonstration network for quantum-secure communication. Attendees also experienced live demonstrations of several project use cases, including:

• quantum-secure exchange of genomic data
• secret sharing between authorities within a quantum-secure network
• HSM backups using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
• real-time audio and video communication over quantum-secure channels

A central highlight of the day was the interactive discussion with the audience, where diverse perspectives and insightful questions from stakeholders further emphasized the growing relevance of quantum-secure communication.
The event once again demonstrated how essential open and interdisciplinary exchange between research, industry and public institutions is for advancing the EuroQCI initiative and strengthening Europe’s future cyber security.

Photos: Valerie Maltseva & Katharina Schiffl

The QCI-CAT consortium successfully held its 6th General Assembly, bringing project partners together once again in Vienna—the same place where the project originally kicked off.
Over the course of the meeting, partners reviewed the latest progress across the project and worked intensively on finalizing key results. With the project now entering its final phase, discussions focused on consolidating achievements and ensuring a successful completion of the QCI-CAT activities.
In addition to technical discussions, the consortium also prepared the upcoming final stakeholder event, where the project’s outcomes will be presented to the wider community and relevant stakeholders.
The meeting once again highlighted the strong collaboration within the consortium and the collective commitment to delivering impactful results for quantum-secure communication in Austria and within the broader EuroQCI initiative.

The QCI CAT project proudly announces the QURIOS Quantum Technologies Academy which supports the transition to Quantum Safe Communication by empowering decision makers and enabling the workforce. Check out our courses and workshops on Quantum Key Distribution: www.qurios.academy.

The QCI-CAT project is pleased to reflect on a very successful 5th General Assembly, which took place on September 18th and 19th, 2025. During this meeting, our consortium partners gathered to review the ongoing project progress, discuss critical topics for the upcoming phases, align on next steps to ensure the continued success of QCI-CAT, and to prepare for the next review meeting with experts from the European Commission.

We extend our sincere thanks to our partner University of Innsbruck for hosting of this General Assembly. The well-prepared setting provided an ideal environment for productive discussions, strategic planning, and fostering our strong partnership as we move forward into the next stages of the project.

The QCI-CAT consortium made a trip to the optical ground station (OGS) near Innsbruck during its general assembly meeting. Participants from AIT, SBA, Graz University of Technology and Med Uni Graz took the cable car from Innsbruck to the mount top. At the Hafelekar, located at 2265 m, stands the brand-new OGS of the University of Innsbruck featuring a 1-meter diameter primary mirror.

The ground station is named after Marietta Blau, an Austrian physicist who made groundbreaking discoveries on cosmic rays in the 1930s. The data for her research was actually taken in the very same spot, in the hut just next to the OGS. Today, it is recognized as a “Historic Site” by the European Physical Society.

The station is planned for research activities focusing on quantum communication with and via quantum satellites, quantum sensing in the fields of atmospheric science and astrophysics, and the entanglement of remote quantum memories and quantum processors as a step towards a global quantum internet.

In the EuroQCI context, the Marietta Blau OGS will be one of Austria’s space connections to the Eagle-1 satellite.

More information about the OGS can be found here: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/groundstation-marietta-blau