Status of the SPL at CERN

The construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is in its final phase, and commissioning with beam is scheduled to begin before the end of 2007. It is now time to prepare for increasing as much as possible the performance of this unique instrument to maximize the benefits for physics. An essential part of the proposed luminosity upgrade plan is the replacement of the CERN PS and its injectors by a 50 GeV proton synchrotron (PS2) and a 4 GeV superconducting linac (SPL). The design of the SPL has recently been updated and the optimization of its high-energy part will continue until ~2010. For the foreseen luminosity upgrade of the LHC a low-power version of the SPL (LP-SPL) is under study, which can be upgraded to a multi-megawatt machine providing beam to high-power proton users such as neutrino facilities and/or radio-active beam facilities. The construction start of the low-energy normal conducting SPL front-end, the 160 MeV "Linac4", is scheduled for January 2008, with the goal of being operational as injector for the PS Booster (PSB) at the beginning of 2012. The design status of Linac4, LP-SPL, and SPL are described, as well as their foreseen implementation into the CERN proton injector chain.