Beyond-COVID (BY-COVID) aims to provide comprehensive open data on SARS-CoV-2, and other infectious diseases across scientific, medical, public health and policy domains. The project will have a strong emphasis on mobilising raw viral sequences, helping to identify and monitor the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants. It will further accelerate access to and linking of data and metadata on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, enable federated data analysis conform with data protection regulations, and harmonisation and management of meta-data and sample- identifiers, as well as long-term cataloguing to ensure interoperability of national and global efforts.