Dear colleagues,

After 63 years since its establishment on the basis of international cooperation, ESO is now de facto evolving "from world-class to world-leading", in light of the huge progress within its strategy for the 2020s. Let me share with you some achievements and challenges that developed during 2025.

The stellar 'Initial Mass Function' (IMF) is a fundamental observable and a crucial component for the understanding of a vast range of astrophysical processes. It is suspected to have its roots in the mass distribution of dense molecular cloud cores resulting from molecular cloud fragmentation, but what shapes this 'Core Mass Function' (CMF) and how core masses really relate to stellar masses, remains unclear. This ESO workshop will summarize and discuss recent observational and theoretical progress on these questions and explore ways forward with ongoing progress in instrumentation (e.g., ALMA upgrade, ELT(s)).

On December 1st, 2025, ESO signed an agreement with a large international consortium for the design and construction of MOSAIC, a Multi-Object Spectrograph for ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The consortium is lead by the Principal Investigator Roser Pelló from Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory and includes partners from 14 countries across Europe and beyond. MOSAIC will have complementary capabilities in terms of multiplex, wavelength coverage and spectral resolution compared to the the other instruments under construction for the ELT. 

AGN feedback has become a key element in understanding how galaxies evolve. The time is ripe to discuss what has been learned and plan future lines of research also in the context of upcoming facilities. The workshop will take place on July 6-10, 2026, at the ESO Headquarters in Garching near Munich. Do not miss the chance to present your work and participate in shaping the future of this exciting scientific area! The deadline for abstracts is January 15, 2026.

The expansion of adaptive optics (AO) from an "instrument" concept to a "facility" concept, like the AO Facility (AOF) on UT4, has been a huge success. AO is now routinely used on UT4, enabling exquisite science on the smallest spatial scales while providing more stable image quality during longer exposures. This success, however, has led to a large imbalance in telescope pressure factors in the past few periods with many users wanting to benefit from these assets. To address this hurdle and ensure more highly-rated community proposals get scheduled, ESO is launching several key actions. One of these initiatives is the "Second Generation Deformable Secondary Mirror" project (2GDSM).