Microfluidic tools have made recent biological and biomedical research leaps possible. At the interface of physics, engineering, chemistry, and biology, innovation in microfluidic approaches as positively impacted areas as diverse as nucleotide sequencing, functional genomics, single-cell and single-molecule studies, and biomedical diagnostics. Many of these applications, including next-generation sequencing devices, have been revolutionised by miniaturisation, paving the way for global gene analysis and hence transforming biology. Working on the pico- to nanoliter scale not only allows a high-degree of parallelisation, but importantly offers superb spatiotemporal control. Small objects such as cells, or even discrete parts thereof, can be exposed to unique conditions, facilitating entirely novel approaches to inquiry in modern biology and chemistry.The EMBL Microfluidics Conference 2020 brings together top researchers and emerging research leaders, to spark scientific exchange and create community. Topics spanning from fundamental physics & chemistry, to device design, to nascent biological applications will be presented, which should be of interest to everyone from experts in microfluidic design to users of the next-generation of microfluidic tools, and from academic scholars and trainees to industry colleagues.