Abstract The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most energetic particle collider. It took many years to plan and build this large complex machine which promises exciting, new physics results for many years to come. We describe and review the machine design and parameters, with emphasis on subjects like luminosity and beam conditions which are relevant for the large community of physicists involved in the experiments at the LHC. First collisions in the LHC were achieved at the end of 2009 and followed by a period of a rapid performance increase. We discuss what has been learned so far and what can be expected for the future.