The history and the current state of the PDB and EMDB archives is briefly described, as well as some of the challenges that they face. It seems natural that the role of structural biology archives will change from being a pure repository of historic data into becoming an indispensable resource for the wider biomedical community. As part of this transformation, it will be necessary to validate the biomacromolecular structure data and ensure the highest possible quality for the archive holdings, to combine structural data from different spatial scales into a unified resource and to integrate structural data with functional, genetic and taxonomic data as well as other information available in bioinformatics resources. Some recent developments and plans to address these challenges at PDBe are presented.