The volume is a follow-up to the INdAM meeting “Special metrics and quaternionic geometry” held in Rome in November 2015. It offers a panoramic view of a selection of cutting-edge topics in differential geometry, including 4-manifolds, quaternionic and octonionic geometry, twistor spaces, harmonic maps, spinors, complex and conformal geometry, homogeneous spaces and nilmanifolds, special geometries in dimensions 5–8, gauge theory, symplectic and toric manifolds, exceptional holonomy and integrable systems. The workshop was held in honor of Simon Salamon, a leading international scholar at the forefront of academic research who has made significant contributions to all these subjects. The articles published here represent a compelling testimony to Salamon’s profound and longstanding impact on the mathematical community. Target readership includes graduate students and researchers working in Riemannian and complex geometry, Lie theory and mathematical physics.