International agreement has been achieved on the names of series and stages into which the Permian System should be divided and on the levels for the basal boundaries of these subdivisions. This scheme incorporates three excellent reference successions: the Cisuralian Series of the Urals, the Guadalupian Series of the SW USA and the Lopingian Series of South China which represent the Lower Permian and the lower and upper series of the Upper Permian respectively. The scheme will serve as a working template for the Permian Subcommission in defining the GSSPs for intra-systemic boundaries and also enables us to correlate the Permian marine sequences worldwide in a higher resolution manner.