[1] The experiment studies the hadronic final states produced in interactions of various beam particles (pions, protons and beryllium, argon, and xenon nuclei) with a variety of fixed nuclear targets at the SPS energies.

[2] The main tracking devices are four large volume time projection chambers (TPCs), which are capable of detecting up to 70% of all charged particles created in the studied reactions.

Additionally, four small volume TPCs placed directly along the beamline region are used in case of hadron and light ion beams.

In 2018 the NA61/SHINE collaboration published an addendum presenting an intent to upgrade the experimental facility and perform a new set of measurements after Long Shutdown 2.

[25] As in the original program, the new one proposes studies of hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus interactions for heavy ions, neutrino and cosmic-ray physics.