The Second International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials (ICFRM-2) was held on April 13-17, 1986, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The objective of this conference was to provide an international forum for the exchange of new information and the furtherance of understanding of the science and technology of materials proposed for use in fusion reactors. The international nature of this conference can be seen in the attendance which was composed of 57% from the United States, 24% from the European Community, and 18% from Japan. This conference represented a merging of the three US topical meetings on fusion reactor materials (Miami, January 1979; Seattle, August 1981; and Albuquerque, September 1983) and the First International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials (Tokyo, December 1984). Conference sponsors were the Argonne National Laboratory and the US Department of Energy, with minor sponsorship from the American Nuclear Society and the Nuclear Metallurgy Committee of the AIME and ASM. The technical programme contained a total of 254 technical papers, of which 59 were oral and the balance posterboard presentations. The conference proceedings will be published in a special supplement to the Journal of Nuclear Materials (Volumes 141, 142, and 143).