Veldhoven
Dutch town in North Brabant, global headquarters and primary manufacturing site of ASML.
Last refreshed: 17 May 2026
Why does one Dutch town of 45,000 people hold the keys to the global chip supply?
Timeline for Veldhoven
Mentioned in: ASML Q2 guidance lands €300m below consensus
European Tech Sovereignty- Why is Veldhoven important to the global semiconductor industry?
- Veldhoven is the headquarters and primary manufacturing site of ASML, the only company in the world that makes extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which are essential for producing the most advanced chips. No modern smartphone, AI processor, or data-centre chip can be made without ASML technology.Source: ASML / Wikipedia
- Is ASML planning to expand its Veldhoven campus?
- Yes. ASML has committed to building a new campus in Veldhoven equivalent in area to 50 football fields, adjacent to its existing headquarters. The expansion is driven by AI-related chip demand and has received Dutch court approval.Source: Silicon UK / ASML
- How much does ASML earn from its Veldhoven operations?
- ASML posted €2.76 billion in net profit in Q1 2026, a 15% year-on-year increase. Essentially all of ASML's engineering and manufacturing is concentrated in Veldhoven, making the town the single most valuable industrial location in Europe by value of output.Source: Euronews / ASML
Background
Veldhoven is a municipality of around 45,000 people in the North Brabant province of the southern Netherlands, located adjacent to Eindhoven in the Brainport Eindhoven technology corridor. The town is home to the global headquarters and primary R&D and manufacturing campus of ASML, the world's only maker of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines and the dominant supplier of deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems. ASML's Veldhoven campus houses its Board of Management, core engineering teams, and the assembly lines for EUV and DUV machines — each of which ships with hundreds of thousands of components sourced from over 800 suppliers. ASML's Q2 2026 guidance missed consensus by €300 million, driven by uncertainty over Chinese DUV restrictions .
ASML has committed to a major campus expansion in Veldhoven, with a facility planned to cover the equivalent of 50 football fields adjacent to its existing site. The expansion reflects both the surge in AI-driven chip demand and the Dutch government's ambition to keep ASML rooted in the Netherlands despite competition from other nations seeking to attract the company. In Q1 2026, ASML posted net profits of €2.76 billion, a 15% year-on-year increase, underscoring the economic weight of the single Veldhoven campus in global semiconductor supply.
Veldhoven's global importance extends FAR beyond its physical scale. Because ASML holds a near-monopoly on EUV lithography, the Veldhoven campus is effectively the chokepoint for advanced chip manufacturing worldwide. Export decisions made by the Dutch government about ASML's DUV and EUV shipments from Veldhoven directly affect China's semiconductor capability, US national-security strategy, and European tech-sovereignty ambitions simultaneously.
