Myopia (near-sightedness) is increasing in prevalence worldwide, most likely due to higher levels of education and changing lifestyles of young generations. The expectation is that half of the world’s citizens will be myopic by 2050. Myopia-related complications later in life are a serious threat to vision and will increase the rates of untreatable blindness. Prevention strategies and pharmacological and optical treatments to delay progression of myopia in childhood are emerging, but most eye care professionals still do not apply these interventions due to inadequate information and limited efficacy. To facilitate future myopia research, the Consortium of Refractive Error And Myopia research in Children (CREAM-Kids) is embarking on a collaboration to collect, harmonize and openly release individual-level data for 16 different cohorts of children from across the world. We aim to accurately predict myopia progression, identify lifestyle risk factors for myopia, and develop targeted prevention strategies.