LHC status and plans

The Large Hadron Collider project (LHC) was approved by the CERN Council in December 1994 as a two-stage project, the first stage at two thirds of the final centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV to become operational in 2004 and the final stage to be completed in 2008. The CERN management was also requested to solicit contributions to the machine construction from Non-member States involved in the experimental programme in order to allow construction of the machine in a single stage. Taking into consideration the strong support for the project from a number of countries outside the Member States, the CERN Council decided in December 1996 that the machine should be constructed in a single stage with first physics in 2005. Although global participation in detector construction has been well established for many years, this is the first large CERN project in which Non-member States have been involved in the construction of a machine. A brief status report is given and future plans are discussed