Abstract Magnetic confinement fusion offers the promise of sustainable and safe energy production on Earth. Advanced experimental scenarios exploit fascinating yet uncommon ability confined plasmas to bifurcate into states enhanced performance upon application additional free sources. Self-regulation small-scale turbulent eddies is essential accessing these improved regimes. However, after several decades, basic principles for bifurcations are still largely debated clarifications from first lacking. We show here, computed primitive kinetic equations, establishment a state through self-organisation plasma microturbulence. Our results highlight critical role interface between material boundaries demonstrate importance propagation turbulence activity beyond regions convective drive. These observations strongly suggest paradigm shift where magnetised at onset self-organises globally state, ‘nonlocally’ controlled by fluxes activity.