A warm welcome to the 29th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Biomaterials that will take place on September 9–13, 2018 in Maastricht, the Netherlands! The theme of this year’s conference is “Materials for Life,” which expresses the challenge the field of biomaterials is currently facing: to provide effective and affordable biomaterials-based methods to repair and regenerate damaged and diseased tissues and organs.This challenge can only be overcome by converging breakthrough developments from the fields of chemistry, physics, materials science, biology and engineering to address real clinical needs, while also considering the translational pathway from bench to bedside.