Originally run under the name of EvoWorkshops, the event was an outcome of EvoNet, the Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing,[3] funded by the European Commission under the Information Societies Technology Programme, FP5-IST.

EvoNet was coordinated by Terry Fogarty and managed by Jennifer Willies, both at Edinburgh Napier University at the time, and had more than 100 participating nodes.

For the second time there was a joint event Evolutionary computation and machine learning between EuroGP and EvoApps, Wolfgang Banzhaf and Penousal Machado.

This time there were three keynotes: Marek Vacha "Gregor Mendel: a story beyond peas" and Evelyne Lutton "Exploring the Interplay of Cooperation and Competition in evolutionary computation".

For the first time joint event Evolutionary computation and machine learning between EuroGP and EvoApps, Wolfgang Banzhaf and Penousal Machado.

Conference program chairs were Ting Hu and Nuno Lourenço for EuroGP, Pedro Castillo-Valdivieso for EvoApplications, Luís Paquete and Christine Zarges for EvoCOP and Anikó Ekárt and Juan Romero for EvoMUSART.

Conference program chairs were Lukas Sekanina and Ting Hu for EuroGP, Paul Kaufmann and Pedro Castillo-Valdivieso for EvoApplications, Arnaud Liefooghe and Luís Paquete for EvoCOP and Anikó Ekárt and Antonios Liapis for EvoMUSART.

Conference program chairs were Mauro Castelli and Lukas Sekanina for EuroGP, Kevin Sim and Paul Kaufmann for EvoApplications, Arnaud Liefooghe and Manuel López-Ibáñez for EvoCOP and Juan Romero and Antonios Liapis for EvoMUSART.

The opening invited speaker was Una-May O'Reilly (whose talk versed on adversarial dynamics), while Penousal Machado delivered the closing keynote (on evolution art and sex).

The 20th edition took place on 19–21 April in De Bazel in Amsterdam (Netherlands) with Evert Haasdijk and Jacqueline Heinerman serving as local chair.

Conference program chairs were James McDermott and Mauro Castelli for EuroGP; Bin Hu and Manuel López-Ibáñez for EvoCOP; João Correia and Vic Ciesielski for EvoMUSART; Giovanni Squillero for EvoApplications.

The invited speakers were Kenneth De Jong (EC: Past, Present and Future) and Arthur Kordon (Evolutionary Computation in Industry: A Realistic Overview).

The 19th edition took place between March 30 and April 1 in Seminário de Vilar Rua Arcediago Van Zeller in Porto (Portugal) with Penousal Machado and Ernesto Costa serving as local chair.

Conference program chairs were Malcolm Heywood and James McDermott for EuroGP; Bin Hu and Francisco Chicano for EvoCOP; Colin Johnson and Vic Ciesielski for EvoMUSART; Giovanni Squillero for EvoApplications.

The invited speakers were Richard Forsyth (The evolution of BEAGLE: Confessions of a mongrel rule-breeder) and Kenneth Sörensen (Metaphors in metaheuristics - a symptom of a deeper ailment?).

Conference program chairs were Penousal Machado and Malcolm Heywood for EuroGP; Gabriela Ochoa and Francisco Chicano for EvoCOP; Colin Johnson and Adrián Carballal for EvoMUSART; Antonio Mora for EvoApplications.

The invited speakers were Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (Open-Source Baby Robots for Science, Education and Art) and Paulien Hogeweg (Non-random random mutations: Evolution of Genotype-Phenoptype mapping).

The global conference programme was composed of 144 articles,[8][9][10][11][12] arranged in 42 sessions, plus two plenary talks by Dario Floreano (on bio-inspired flying robots) and by Marco Tomassini (on evolutionary game theory).

During the conference gala dinner held in St. Katherine's Castle Castillo de Santa Catalina, Günther R. Raidl received the 2012 Award for Outstanding Contribution to EC in Europe for his championing role in evolutionary combinatorial optimization.

The global conference programme was composed of 157 articles (29 in EuroGP,[13] 22 in EvoCOP,[14] 19 in EvoBio[15] and 87 in EvoApplication[16][17]), plus two plenary talks by Craig Reynolds (computer graphics) (on Goal-oriented texture synthesis) and by Jean-Pierre Changeux (on Models of the brain: from genes to consciousness).

Of particular relevance has been the Mario AI Championship[18] The first curated evolutionary art exhibition linked to EvoStar was held in Budapest in 2006, in the ArtPool P60 space, and run under the title Process revealed.

The following year, ArtEscapes - Variations of life in the media arts was launched in Valencia in conjunction with the 2007 edition of EvoStar, and spanning 5 more weeks.

EuroGP - EvoAPPLICATIONS (formerly evoWorkshops)- EvoCOP -- EvoMUSART The EvoStar Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evolutionary Computation in Europe was established in 2006 and its first recipient was Jennifer Willies.