The Annual Meeting of ICES Expert Group Chairs (WGCHAIRS) provides an opportunity for chairs of all ICES working groups to share experiences and ideas, co-ordinate work, meet with their steering group, advisory committee and science committee chairs, and highlight any sup-port they need from the ICES network. The group also provides participants with updates on developments in the network and their implications, as well as opportunities to identify future science priorities and plans for advisory products. This 2020 meeting report described advice-related, science-related and cross-cutting issues. Advice topics that are addressed include the perspectives of expert group chairs, the Advisory Committee leadership and ICES Secretariat on the future and presentation of ICES advice, progress with embedding quality assurance in the advisory process, and expertise needed in expert groups supporting advice. Science topics that are addressed included highlighting and disseminating science outputs from expert groups, de-velopment of web texts for expert groups, developing theme and network sessions for ICES An-nual Science Conference and opportunities for science input to the development of ecosystem and fisheries overviews through a pipeline process. Cross-cutting topics included chairs’ per-spectives on what was working well and not so well in the ICES system, implementation of ICES Science and Advisory Plans and the roles of expert groups, the future development of the “Guidelines for ICES groups”, appropriate publication channels for ICES science and revitalising the resolutions process. In breakout groups, expert group chairs addressed mentoring and train-ing for chairs of expert groups and recruiting new participants, as well as recognising and re-warding the role of expert group chairs. Key actions resulting from chairs’ insights are to estab-lish a formal training day for expert group chairs, likely alongside future WGCHAIRS meetings. All existing and incoming expert group chairs will be invited to participate in training activities.