This volume contains the invited and contributed papers presented at the 5th International Conference on X-ray lasers. It provides not only an overview and up-to-date progress report on this field, but also reference material on which future work may be built. Topics covered include collisional X-ray lasers, table-top X-ray lasers, beam optics, X-ray optics, OFI and photo-pumped schemes, capillary schemes, international laser facilities, XUV nonlinear mixing, alternative soft X-ray sources, diagnostics and applications.