Multimedia plays an important role in our daily activities and has become one of the most relevant technological innovation. The evermore increasing computational and communication requirements, demanded by current and next generation multimedia devices, together with energy constraints which characterize portable devices, require innovative design methodologies and tools. The IEEE ESTIMedia symposium aims to bring together people from different multimedia-related research communities who have worked separately but did not interact sufficiently to address the challenges facing the design of hardware and software for multimedia systems. The 12th edition of ESTIMedia is continuing to be run in the Embedded System Week and will provide a forum for researchers, from academia and industry, to present and discuss innovative ideas and solutions related to embedded systems for real-time multimedia.