The Tenth Meeting of the German Society for Research on DNA Repair was held in Berlin in September 2008. Invited presentations by Yosef Shiloh, Stanton L. Gerson, Sacha Beneke, Patrick Concannon, Jochen Dahm-Daphi, Thilo Dörk, Friedrike Eckardt-Schupp, Bernd Epe, Ian Hickson, Ulrich Hübscher, Penny Jeggo, Malik Lutzmann, Christof Niehrs, Primo Schär and Predrag Slijepcevic together with over 80 selected oral and poster presentations generated an inspiring scientific program, which documented the impressive progress of the community and defined future challenges in the field.