  The ALICE Collaboration completed the upgrade of the detector and is now
commissioning for the beginning of the data taking during LHC Run 3. In
parallel, R&D activities and simulation studies are being performed to define
the future of the experiment beyond LHC Run 3. Two detector upgrades are
foreseen for the next long shutdown (LS3). The first is the replacement of the
three layers of the inner tracking system closest to the beam with a novel
vertex detector consisting of curved wafer-scale ultra-thin silicon sensors
arranged in perfectly cylindrical layers to improve impact parameter resolution
and significantly extend the physics capability for the study of the
heavy-flavor production and the low-mass dielectrons. The second upgrade for
the LS3 is the addition of a Forward Calorimeter detector at large rapidity
consisting of a Si-W electromagnetic calorimeter with pad and pixel readout,
that will equip the experiment with unique capabilities to measure small-x
gluon distributions via prompt photon production. A proposal of a
next-generation heavy-ion experiment for LHC Run 5 is also in preparation and
will be discussed. The aim is to perform novel measurements of the
electromagnetic and hadronic probes of the QGP, such as the production of
multiply-charmed baryons, which have so far been inaccessible, both because of
detector performance and luminosity. The concept of the new apparatus foresees
an extensive usage of thin silicon sensors for tracking and a modern particle
identification system, combining a silicon-based time of flight detector, a
RICH detector, an electromagnetic calorimeter and a muon system.
