The 18th European Control Conference (ECC’20), the first virtual ECC, was held in Saint Petersburg, Russia from May 12–15, 2020. The 2020 local host organization was ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, assisted by the Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPME RAS). There were advantages and disadvantages involved in organizing the conference virtually. The main disadvantage was that many people planned to visit Saint Petersburg, one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the former capital and historical scientific center of Russia. The organizers arranged a number of guided virtual tours over the city and museums and provided a number of links to existing city and museum tour facilities. There were 374 registered participants and approximately 30 guests from 45 countries attending the event. ECC’20 received 600 contributions from 60 different countries.