The Netherlands has opened the permit tender for the IJmuiden Ver Gamma-A offshore wind site, which provides space for a one gigawatt wind farm in the North Sea around 53 kilometres off the country’s west coast. The 129 km² site is part of the IJmuiden Ver zone, which spans four sites and could host roughly 6 GW of offshore wind capacity in total. Permits for the Alpha and Beta sites were issued in 2024.
Developers can either bid for the site with subsidy or submit a subsidy-free bid in a parallel auction. A total of €4.75bn in subsidy is available, and the maximum tender amount has been raised from €0.104 to €0.117 per kilowatt-hour to offset uncertainty around a possible grid feed-in tariff. Grid operator TenneT is building the offshore connection: Gamma-A and Gamma-B, each 1 GW, will link to a single 2 GW direct-current platform.
The tender regulations were adjusted to meet EU rules, including the Net-Zero Industry Act requirement for Europe to produce at least 40% of its net-zero technologies domestically by 2030. Site conditions also reflect recent changes to the wind farm site decisions, such as temporary turbine shutdowns of up to 60 hours a year during mass bird migration and a requirement that wind farm management take place within the European Economic Area to satisfy new cybersecurity rules.
Applications can be submitted from 26 November to 10 December 2026. The permit is expected to be granted in the first quarter of 2027, with the wind farm due to become operational in 2032.
The IJmuiden Ver build-out is on the North Sea rather than the Baltic, but it feeds into the same regional push to expand offshore wind and strengthen Europe’s security of supply, and sets a template other coastal states are watching closely.
