On behalf of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC), the 13th International Conference on Culture Collections (ICCC13) will be held in the city of Beijing, China from September 23 to 27, 2013 at Beijing Friendship Hotel. Laboratory-based training courses will be run on September 22, 2013 at Institute of Microbiology,Chinese Academy of Science (IMCAS). WFCC, IMCAS and CSM (China Society for Microbiology) will co-organize the conference. WFCC is a federation of aiming to promote and support the establishment of culture collections and related services, to provide liaison and set up an information network between the collections and their users, to organize workshops and conferences, publications and newsletters and work to ensure the long term perpetuation of important collections. IMCAS is a Chinese state government owned institute and a leading institution in microbiology field in China, which is performing basic and applied research in the field of microbiology. ICCC13 will cover topics of various areas in microorganisms, not only concerning about the collections and management, but also including the biodiversity, phylogenetics and metabolisms, environmental and ecological aspects, as well as about microbes in the bio-economy era. The conference will provide a platform for all the attendances to present their recent progress and fruitful output in researches on microorganisms.