Book excerpt: Failure of welded components can occur during service as well as during fabrication. Most common, analyses of the resistance of welded components against failure are targeted at crack avoidance. Such evaluations are increasingly carried out by modern weldability studies, i. e. considering interactions between the selected base and filler materials, structural design and welding process. Such weldability investigations are particularly targeted to prevent hot cracking, as one of the most common cracking phenomena occurring during weld fabrication. To provide an international information and discussion platform to combat hot cracking, an international workshop on Hot Cracking Phenomena in Welds has been created, based on an initiative of the Institute for Materials and Joining Technology at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg and the Division V. 5 – Safety of Joined Components at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, Germany. The first workshop was organized in Berlin under the topics mechanisms and phenomena, metallurgy and materials, modelling and simulations as well as testing and standardization. It consisted of 20 individual contributions from eight countries, which were compiled in a book that found a very ready market, not only in the welding community. As a consequence of increasing interest, it has been decided to establish the Workshop on Hot Cracking Phenomena in Welds as a regular event every three years embedded in the International Institute of Welding (IIW). Attached to the IIW Commission IX and II Spring intermediate meetings, the second workshop was organized in March 2007.