The BEAR (Bending Magnet for Emission Absorption and Reflectivity) beamline is installed at the right exit of the 8.1 bending magnet at ELETTRA. The beamline — in operation since January 2003 — delivers linear and circularly polarized radiation in the 5 – 1600 eV energy range. The experimental station is composed of a UHV chamber for reflectivity, absorption, fluorescence and angle resolved photoemission measurements and a UHV chamber for in‐situ sample preparation.