The purpose of OPTICS, the International Conference on Optical Communication Systems, is to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested on any of the optical communication components of an optical communication system, or the system itself. Optical fiber is currently the main means for high-rate transmission in communication networks, while supporting the needed bandwidth and requirements that are expected to be imposed on the front-haul network to support the 5G vision. While 5G is designed to support a variety of heterogeneous applications such as massive Internet of Things (IoT), mission critical ultra-reliable and low latency machine-type communications and energy-efficient services, optical fiber communications and photonic networking systems are of paramount importance for driving crucial changes in the architecture of our telecommunication networks. In the last years, there is a great deal of ongoing research efforts that span the entire protocol stack of optical networks, with representative areas being architecture of optical components, optoelectronics, wavelength routing, energy efficiency, flex-grid optical networks and 5G-enabled optical backhaul architectures.