Opening in September 2026, the campus will be the catalyst for the UK’s largest regeneration project, Bristol Temple Quarter.
The flagship 38,000 square metre academic building, which will house 4,600 students and 650 staff, is on the site of the former Royal Mail sorting office next to Bristol Temple Meads railway station. It will be home to world-class teaching and research across business, innovation, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, quantum and more.
More than just a physical space, it will deliver a transformative, interdisciplinary approach to innovation - and it will help start-ups, scale-ups and corporations gain access to the world-class research expertise and entrepreneurial talent from all faculties at the University of Bristol.
It will house the Bristol Innovations Zone (BIZ), a dedicated space for around 300 enterprise partners, providing flexible co-working and event spaces, specialist labs, state-of-the-art equipment, skills training, support services and events. It comes as Bristol was named this month as the best city for start-ups in the UK’s Startup Index, leading in critical metrics such as access to talent, productivity, infrastructure and growth potential.
By opening a second campus in Bristol, the University will be far more embedded in the city than ever before. It will be an inclusive hub for local communities who will be welcome to use the facilities and open areas. Parts of the campus have been shaped in consultation with civic and community partners as dedicated spaces for groups to work together to address local, national and global challenges.
It will include the Bristol Rooms, a signature space for staff and students to work with partners of all kinds on shared challenges, and the Story Exchange, a round space for conversations between people with different backgrounds and forms of expertise.
These civic spaces will complement the University’s Barton Hill Micro-campus, which celebrates its five-year anniversary in 2025, and the recently opened Hartcliffe and Withywood Micro-campus, both of which are designed to make higher education accessible to all.
Several community arts projects are also underway, with local people working with artists and the University to create eye-catching works that will be exhibited with the building opens.
Over 450 people are regularly working on the site every day, such is the scale of the building project. An incredible 1,000 glass panels and 750 solar panels have been installed, with 25,000m² of walls having been plastered and more than 63,000 floor tiles installed to date. Outside, 130 trees are being planted.
The new academic building will join the University’s Temple Quarter Research Hub at nearby Avon Street. It houses the University’s Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI), which is pioneering transformative approaches to digital innovation, and MyWorld, a University of Bristol-led programme for creative technologies. Since becoming fully operational in 2024, this new facility has welcomed industry partners such as Aardman and provided WECA-funded skills bootcamps in Virtual Production for local film and TV professionals.
And, in September 2023, the University's Dental School moved to a new purpose-designed premises on Avon Street which has already offered free dental treatment and services to thousands of local people in Bristol.
The campus is a catalyst for the wider 135-hectare transformation of Bristol Temple Quarter, which aims to deliver 22,000 new jobs and 10,000 new homes, alongside new public and green spaces, and a £1.6 billion annual boost to the regional economy.
With a refurbished Bristol Temple Meads station at its heart, the area will become a world-class gateway to Bristol and the West of England. A new eastern entrance to Bristol Temple Meads train station will open at the same time as the Enterprise Campus, giving direct access from the station to the campus, as well as helping to better connect the station to St Philip’s Marsh and east Bristol.
The University of Bristol is working closely with the Bristol Temple Quarter partners, Bristol City Council, the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority, Network Rail and Homes England, to achieve these aims.
Professor Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol, said: "Excitement is really building now as we enter the final 12-month journey before our fantastic new campus finally opens its doors. Since we signed contracts with developers Sir Robert McAlpine in April 2023, the new building has risen from the ground and is already looking amazing.
"Alongside cutting-edge multidisciplinary research, innovation, start-ups and entrepreneurship, and providing opportunities to work with students and develop talent pipelines, I am particularly proud that the new campus will be a hub for the local community. People of Bristol – we want you to come and join us. This is your University as much as it’s ours."
Professor Judith Squires, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and lead for the Temple Quarter Programme, said: "We’ve reached a really important milestone today in the delivery of our new campus. It is the catalyst for an area of regeneration that will transform this previously neglected area of Bristol into a vibrant place for our local communities.
"The transformation both inside and outside of the main building is truly impressive, with the internal spaces really taking shape and the external landscaping beginning to reveal the future public realm.
"This time next year, we’ll be preparing to welcome the first people to our flagship building, so it is heartening to see the project continuing to develop on schedule and on budget."