Approaching the Nominal Performance at the LHC

In 2015 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) restarted for Run 2 after an almost two year long shutdown to consolidate the machine for operation at nominal beam energy. Following a month of recommissioning and training of the magnet system, the LHC operated for the first time at an energy of 6.5 TeV. The aim of this first year was to master operation at the higher energy and with beams of 25 ns spacing. In 2016 the performance could be pushed based on the experience of 2015, culminating with a luminosity 40% above the design value of 10³⁴ cm⁻²s^{−1}. The status of the machine operation, performance and prospects for the rest of Run 2 and Run 3 will be discussed.