Members of the XBT (Expendable BathyThermograph) community met in November in Beijing, China, at the 4th XBT Workshop: XBT Science and the Way Forward. The meeting was an international collaboration, with 30+ attendees from regions including USA, Australia, Europe, China, India, Brazil and Japan. XBT data make up around 15% of the global historical upper-ocean temperature profile database and is used for many applications, including to study ocean currents, ocean heat content, climate change and meridional heat transport.