The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin are co-hosting the conferences of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC, www.spnhc.org) and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN, www.ggbn.org). It is for the first time that both societies are coming together. From 20 – 25 June 2016, more than 350 participants from 31 countries are expected to come to Berlin. It will be the most important meeting on biological collections in Europe. Thematic priorities are the sustainability of scientific collections in an era of climate change and biodiversity loss, the opening of these archives of life for the public and their future development.