Large and complexs oftware systems provide the necessary infrastucture in all- industries today. In order to construct such large systems in a systematic manner, the focus in the development methodologies has switched in the last two decades from functional issues to structural issues: both data and functions are enc- sulated into software units that are integrated into large systems by means of various techniques supporting reusability and modifiability. This encapsulation principle is essential to both the object-oriented and the more recent compone-based sofware engineering paradigms. Formal methods have been applied successfully to the verification of mediatized programs in prool and hardware design. However, their application to large systems requires the further development of specification and verification techniques supporting the concepts of reusability and modifiability. In order to bring together researchers and practioners in the areas of so- ware engineering and formal methods, we organized the 1st International S- posium on Formal Methods for Components and Objects (FMCO) in Leiden, The Netherlands, November 5–8, 2002. The program consisted of invited tu- rials and more technical presentations given by leading experts in the fields of Theoretical Computer Science and Software Engineering. The symposium was attended by more than 100 people. This volume contains the contributions of the invited speakers to FMCO 2002. We believe that the presented material provides a unique combination of ideas on software engineering and formal methods which we hope will be an inspiration for those aiming at further bridging the gap between the theory and practice of software engineering.