These elements will be managed together into a newly constituted Instrumentation Programme. The decision to make this merger now comes as a result of several factors, including:

• Science coherence – The planning of the long-term future of the instrumentation for ELT, VLT and VLTI must be done in a coherent way.  This gives an opportunity and a mechanism to develop a unified Optical/IR roadmap for ESO.
• Common Cultural and Managerial Issues – This will facilitate addressing the challenges for the future and lessons learned from the past in a coherent way.
• Common Management Opportunities – A number of managerial opportunities arising from the merging have been identified such as improved management of ESO deliverables to consortia.
• Common Standards for Operations –Clearly in an integrated operation for the Paranal and Armazones sites, common standards (including maintenance and spares policy), and to the extent possible, a common software architecture make sense.
• Common interface to the observatories – A common interface to the La Silla Paranal Observatory will be more efficient and will be easier to adapt to the developing needs of the Integrated Operations programme.
• Common Internal Processes – With new requirements being developed for improved project control, resource management, configuration management, and documentation management, merging the programmes will ensure common solutions and a common culture.
• Common Interface to the Member States – advantages for funding agencies and institutes – There is a rather large overlap of PI institutes/funding agencies in the different programs, which argues for a coherent approach. A single Instrumentation Programme will allow to more openly discuss the ambitions of various Member States and Institutes to contribute across all ESO instruments, allowing ESO to find a better balance of effort within and outside ESO.

After an open recruitment process, Michele Cirasuolo (until now ESO ELT Programme Scientist) has been chosen as the Programme Manager of the newly created Instrumentation Programme. Michele started in his new role on 1 July 2024, and the merger of the elements of the new Instrumentation Programme will be completed during 2024. A recruitment exercise will be held to fill the vacant ELT Programme Scientist role. In the meantime, Jöel Vernet is acting ELT Programme Scientist.