The significance reaches beyond gadgets. Altermagnetism counts as a previously unrecognized symmetry class of matter, and it connects to several major research areas: topological phenomena, unconventional superconductivity, and quantum materials with strong electron interactions.

How Did the Team Find It?

The discovery grew out of years of collaboration between Sinova's group at Mainz and Jungwirth's team at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Šmejkal, who also held a Prague affiliation, spent eight years at Mainz, from 2016 to 2024, first as a doctoral researcher and later as a postdoctoral scientist in Sinova's group.

During that stretch, Šmejkal led development of the theoretical framework behind altermagnetism. The team combined advanced mathematical symmetry analysis with spintronics and spotted a pattern of magnetic behavior nobody had classified.

The starting point was odd electrical behavior in magnetic materials, including the predicted crystal anomalous Hall effect — unusual electrical transport in certain crystal structures. At first, these quirks looked like features of individual materials. The researchers eventually realized a broader principle involving electron spin symmetries tied them together.

The milestone came in 2022, when the team published a comprehensive symmetry classification of altermagnetism and flagged hundreds of candidate materials that might show it.

Experimental physicists then tested those predictions. Tools included angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, or ARPES, which reveals how electrons behave inside materials, plus electrical transport measurements. The experiments confirmed altermagnetic behavior in several materials, cementing the classification on hard data rather than theory alone.

How Big Has the Field Become?

Very big, very fast. Hundreds of scientific papers have appeared within just a few years, and altermagnetism now draws research groups across Europe, North America, and Asia. It has become a prominent topic at international physics conferences — a measure of how quickly a hidden phase became mainstream.

The Europhysics Prize, established in 1975, honors discoveries that significantly advance scientific understanding, with a substantial share of recognized research conducted in Europe. The 2026 award cites both the theoretical and experimental work that established altermagnetism as a new fundamental form of collinear magnetic order. Organizers scheduled the ceremony for September 2026 at the 32nd General Conference of the EPS Condensed Matter Division (CMD32) in Graz, Austria.

Who Are the Winners?

Sinova is a physics professor at JGU and director of SPICE, researching magnetism, spintronics, and quantum materials. Šmejkal, who did much of the crucial theoretical work during his Mainz years, now holds affiliations at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, and the Prague Institute of Physics. Jungwirth, affiliated with the Prague institute and the University of Nottingham, collaborated closely with Sinova's team and helped lay the theoretical foundations.

Together, they've uncovered a fundamental property of magnetic matter that escaped recognition for more than a century — and opened a fresh direction for quantum physics and future electronics.