The first and second international conferences: “Nonlinear Waves --- Theory and Applications” took place in Beijing, China in the summers of 2008 and 2010. These conferences were characterized by their high level of scientific content and attractive venue for collegial interactions. Each of the two conferences had approximately 200 speakers delivering talks on a wide range of topics in nonlinear waves. Detailed information on these conferences can be found at the website: http://lsec.cc.ac.cn/~icnwta/and http://lsec.cc.ac.cn/~icnwta2/ Based on the success of these two conferences, we are now organizing the third international conference: “Nonlinear waves --- theory and applications” in Beijing, China from June 12-15, 2013. As before, the goal of this conference is to survey recent advances on a wide range of topics of current interest in nonlinear waves and related phenomena including: integrable and non-integrable equations, physical applications such as optics, Bose- Einstein condensates and fluid dynamics, and numerical computations. The conference will provide a forum for mathematicians and physicists worldwide to present their latest results and a means to discuss their recent research with each other.