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A considerable amount of work has been devoted in recent years to the progenitors of the various types of stellar explosions, be it novae, supernovae or gamma-rays bursts. Theoreticians are actively exploring the different ingredients (mass, mass loss, metallicity, rotation, binarity, magnetic field) affecting the appearance of a massive star just before the time of its explosion (SNII, SNIb, SNIc, long gamma-ray burst), as well as the different pathways leading to explosions in binary systems (novae, SNIa, short gamma-ray burst). On the observationnal side, several progenitors of SNII have already been identified in deep HST images of their host galaxies and tantalizing hints on the role of metallicity in shaping the properties of SN types have been obtained recently. Reliable statistics for various SN frequencies as a function of type of the host galaxy have been established at low redshift and this type of work is currently extended to higher redshifts.

The general situation is expected to evolve rapidly, with the development of current and forthcoming surveys (SDSS, SN Factory, LAMOST, PAnnStars, Gaia and later the LSST), which will provide large, homogeneous, samples of SN. In such conditions, a Workshop on the aforementioned topic appears quite timely.