Linear machines are excellent choices in industrial applications for their supreme ability to generate direct motions without mechanical transmissions. However, the special structure of cut-open magnetic circuit, large air-gap length, and half-filled slots, brings massive difficulties for design and controlof high performance linear machine drive systems. This special session is aimed to collect the latest theoretical and technological ideas for improving the performance of linear machine drive systems. Advances in new linear machine topologies, integrated modelling, multi-objective optimization methods, and high performance control schemes are strongly welcome.Topics of great interest are categorized as follows in details.