Over the past few years, interest in chromatin and its evolution has grown. To further advance these interests, we organized a workshop with the support of The Company of Biologists to debate the current state of knowledge regarding the origin and evolution of chromatin. This workshop led to prospective views on the development of a new field of research that we term ‘EvoChromo’. In this short Spotlight article, we define the breadth and expected impact of this new area of scientific inquiry on our understanding of both chromatin and evolution.