The year of advantage—and what comes next

Two years ago, we predicted that the first demonstrations of quantum advantage would arrive by the end of 2026, if the quantum and high-performance computing communities worked together.

That’s why, at IBM Quantum Developer Conference 2026 (QDC 2026), we’re tracking our progress across the four pathways that carry us from advantage to useful applications: (1) advantage with frontier circuits, (2) the path to IBM Quantum Starling, (3) the path to integrations, and (4) the path to practical applications.

Meanwhile, an Algorithmiq experiment simulating the quantum dynamics of a heterogeneous material, first demonstrated on IBM Quantum Heron as part of this year's quantum advantage results, now executes 8x faster on Nighthawk r2.Read the full Nighthawk r2 announcement on the IBM Quantum blog.

The same verifiability that made this year’s quantum advantage demonstrations credible is also what transforms a quantum result into something businesses can act on.

This is the year quantum advantage became real—now, help us make it useful, and start building with us on IBM Quantum Platform.