The LHCb experiment is running at the Large Hadron Collider to study CP violation and rare decays in the beauty and charm sectors. The motivation and the strategy of the upgrade envisaged for the long shutdown LS2 (2018) is presented. The current results for some exemplary physics analyses are given and the expected performances foreseen for 2018 and for the LHCb Upgrade project with an integrated luminosity of 50 fb$^{-1}$ are summarized.