The Twelfth International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming was held in Sydney, Australia, July 9–11, 2002. The conference was colocated with two other events, the Nineteenth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2002) and the Fifteenth Annual Conference on Computational Learning Theory (COLT2002). Startedin 1991, Inductive Logic Programming is the leading annual forum for researchers working in Inductive Logic Programming and Relational Learning. Continuing a series of international conferences devoted to Inductive Logic Programming and Relational Learning, ILP 2002 was the central event in 2002 for researchers interested in learning relational knowledge from examples. The Program Committee, following a resolution of the Community Me- ing in Strasbourg in September 2001, took upon itself the issue of the possible change of the name of the conference. Following an extended e-mail discussion, a number of proposed names were subjected to a vote. In the first stage of the vote, two names were retained for the second vote. The two names were: Ind- tive Logic Programming, and Relational Learning. It had been decided that a 60% vote would be needed to change the name; the result of the vote was 57% in favor of the name Relational Learning. Consequently, the name Inductive Logic Programming was kept.