The first Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT) took place at Harwell in 1960. Since that time, the Symposia were organized every other year in different countries of the European Community. Key issues of the earlier conferences were the exchange of experience concerning the design, construction and operation of small devices intended to investigate the basic problems related to plasma heating and confinement. During the last ten years the interest of participants has focused more and more on large-scale machines and on technological aspects of fusion reactors.