New underground laboratories: Europe, Asia and the Americas

Deep underground laboratories provide the low radioactive background environment necessary to explore the highest energy scales that cannot be reached with accelerators, by searching for extremely rare phenomena. In addition, these laboratories provide unique opportunities to sectors of other fields: geodynamics, rock mechanics, hydrology and the study of life under extreme conditions. round laboratories of different size and depth exist in all the regions. This article is focussed on future perspectives, reviewing the newer facilities, those still under project and the space becoming available at the older laboratories. We shall not discuss the existing or proposed facilities dedicated to detectors of long base line experiment with reactor or accelerator beams.