Particle accelerators are among the largest and most complex scientific instruments mankind has conceived.
Since ever we observe the evidence of particle acceleration in lightning, in their visual (flash) and acoustic (thunder) expression, but the first studies of acceleration and deflection of charged particles date back only to the end of the ‘800.
Nowadays there are more than 30 000 particle accelerators worldwide: their number has doubled during the last 20 years. Most of them are machines for ion implantation,  cancer therapy and for biomedical research. The largest and most complex ones are used for the research in high energy physics. These ones require more and more sophisticated and costly technologies to probe the matter and to understand the laws of our universe, which presently is only known in a small fraction.
This lecture gives an overview of the technological challenges towards a future generation of particle accelerators of high energy physics, keeping in mind the important applications of these technologies in other fields, in particular particle accelerators for cancer therapy and synchrotron light sources.