The Beyond-COVID (BY-COVID) project is a groundbreaking initiative involving 55 partners from 19 countries across biomedical fields, hospitals, public health, and social sciences. It aims to provide comprehensive open data on SARS-CoV-2 and infectious diseases, with a strong focus on mobilizing raw viral sequences for variant monitoring. BY-COVID accelerates data access, analysis, and harmonization, aligning with the One-Health approach and leveraging European infrastructures like ELIXIR, BBMRI, ECRIN, PHIRI, and CESSDA. The project integrates efforts such as the COVID-19 Data Platform and the Versatile emerging infectious disease observatory project (VEO), maximizing efficiency and fostering synergies with the European Health Data Space. The interdisciplinary collaboration enhances European readiness for future pandemics, strengthens genomic surveillance, and boosts rapid-response capabilities. The project’s outputs, facilitating data access across domains, benefit scientists, SMEs, and industry, generating new insights into infectious diseases.