In recent years our knowledge of star, brown dwarf and planet formation has progressed immensely due to new data in the IR domain (Spitzer telescope), new X-ray campaigns such as the Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project (COUP) and the X-ray Emission Survey of Taurus (XEST), with XMM-Newton, as well as adaptive optics results and synoptic studies of young stellar and substellar objects.