Beyond Ideology: How Digital Ecosystems Are Reshaping Terrorism in Europe

Traditional ideology-driven terrorism dominates the landscape, however, for a significant number of perpetrators, violence has become a means of gaining identity, recognition, and belonging.

This development has created a more fragmented, complex and less predictable threat across Europe.

Traditional ideology-driven terrorism  remains persistent, with jihadism being the most prevalent form.

A total 45 terrorist  attacks were recorded across 10 EU Member States noted by Europol, including 22 completed attacks, 20 foiled attempts, and 3 failed.

486 suspects  were arrested for terrorism-related offences across 21 EU Member States, 71% of whom for jihadism-related offences.

5 fatalities and 81 injuries resulted from jihadist attacks and 1 fatality following a right-wing attack.

However, while radicalisation no longer depends solely on direct contact with established terrorist organisations, violent actors increasingly combine extremist ideologies with criminality, conspiracy narratives and nihilistic violence.

As violence, identity, and ideology become increasingly intertwined, the traditional indicators that once served for the identification of terrorist threats are now becoming more complex and less predictable. This development has become a new challenge for law enforcement across Europe.

The growing influence of newer destabilising ideologies, alongside traditional extremist narratives, illustrates the evolving nature of the threat. In this complex security environment, effective cooperation and information exchange between national authorities are fundamental to anticipating developments and delivering a robust response to the continuously evolving threat landscape.

Digitalisation and fragmentation Shape the New Face of Terrorism

Online platforms have become a catalytic environment for the development of the terrorist threat. Social media, encrypted messaging services, gaming platforms and decentralised online communities now serve as ecosystems where propaganda, radicalisation, recruitment, and planning of offline actions reinforce one another.

The online environment enables terrorist organisations to reach individuals directly. Simultaneously, it gives the space to self-radicalised perpetrators to mobilise independently, often without formal membership or previously established direction.

At the same time, criminal actors increasingly provide services that terrorists can exploit and vice versa. From money laundering and weapons trafficking to online fraud, encrypted communications and other crime-as-a-service capabilities, violent extremist communities borrow tactics from organised crime.

Hybrid threat actors make use of organised crime and instrumentalise proxies to perpetrate terrorist offences. The main objective of hybrid threat actors is to destabilise society.

Rather than single attacks, destabilisation involves persistent, targeted and cumulative disruptions.

Terrorist actors no longer need large organisational structures to cause harm. Online ecosystems enable dispersed networks, lone actors and self-initiated cells to radicalise, mobilise and act autonomously. The result is a far more complex threat landscape in which boundaries between ideologies, and of extremely violent and terrorist acts are increasingly blurred, making threats significantly harder to identify before they materialise.

Similar to other forms of terrorism, the online environment has fundamentally transformed the operational model of jihadist terrorism. Rather than organising complex attacks, terrorist groups increasingly encourage individuals to act remotely by spreading propaganda through digital platforms.

Many of these perpetrators exhibit only a superficial grasp of ideology.  Instead, they are driven by extremist narratives and motivated by personal grievances and a fascination with violence. This shift creates a more diffuse and less predictable threat, where the accumulation of attacks by lone actors and small, self-initiated cells can produce the same psychological impact as highly coordinated operations.

Young People: Both Targets And Perpetrators

The report identifies the persistent phenomenon – the involvement of young people – as one of the major developments in the current terrorism landscape. Violent extremist propaganda, gaming communities and violent digital subcultures radicalise vulnerable young people. Increasingly, they become both victims of manipulation and perpetrators of violence, with the lines between these two becoming less clear than ever before.

In 2025, 130 terrorism suspects arrested across the EU were aged 18 or younger, with the youngest being just  12 years old.

On 30 October 2025, in Italy, a 16-year-old was arrested following a prior search that led to the retrieval of knives, axes and drawings of swastikas. Investigators also found evidence identifying him as the administrator of a messaging app channel where he shared anti-Semitic content, among other things, and encouraged violence against Jewish people and foreign nationals. He also expressed support for, and glorified, mass-casualty attacks.

Many young people display only a superficial understanding of established ideologies. Instead, they are seen to embrace fragmented combinations of extremist narratives encountered online. This growing overlap between vulnerability and criminality, a development also seen in organised crime, adds another layer of complexity to the terrorism threat landscape, requiring responses that combine prevention, safeguarding, and law enforcement.

Beyond Ideology

Across jihadist, right-wing, left-wing, anarchist and other forms of terrorism and violent extremism, ideological commitment increasingly coexists with personal grievances, the search for identity, belonging, and recognition.

As these motivations merge, the boundaries that once separated terrorist ideologies are becoming less distinct, making threats harder to identify and anticipate.   Within decentralised online communities, such as The Com network, violence has become a means of gaining status and recognition.

Rather than being united by a coherent political or religious doctrine, individual actors move fluidly between extremist narratives, misogyny, nihilism, criminality and terrorist propaganda, adopting whichever ideas reinforce their identity within the group. Violence is rewarded with visibility and social capital, and extreme behaviour is driven by notoriety itself.

Across the terrorism landscape, from religiously inspired terrorism to militant accelerationism, online communities shape individuals through a sense of belonging.

Ideology no longer acts alone, as violence itself becomes part of the self-identification. Motivation is more fluid, and radicalisation pathways become considerably more difficult to recognise. As online ecosystems dissolve traditional ideological boundaries and enable individuals to move between extremist milieus, law enforcement can no longer rely solely on conventional ideological criteria to identify emerging threats.

This leads to a new landscape where terrorism is more fragmented, more adaptive and less predictable.

The War in Europe

Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine continued to feature in terrorist and violent extremist narratives, particularly within right-wing circles, though it was assessed as being less prominent than in previous years. The conflict remained a point of ideological divergence, with some actors portraying Russia positively as an anti-Western power, while others adopted pro-Ukraine positions. In 2025, concerns persisted that the war could facilitate extremist skill acquisition, illicit weapons trafficking, the exploitation of migratory flows, and further societal divisions within the EU.

Source: Europol