To meet a critical and growing need for emergency physicians and emergency medicine resources worldwide, physicians must be trained to deliver time-sensitive interventions and lifesaving emergency care. Currently, there is no globally recognized, standard curriculum that defines the basic minimum standards for specialist trainees in emergency medicine. To address this deficit, the International Federation for Emergency Medicine convened a committee of international physicians, health professionals and other experts in emergency medicine and international emergency medicine development to outline a curriculum for training of specialists in emergency medicine. This curriculum document represents the consensus of recommendations by this committee. The curriculum is designed to provide a framework for educational programmes in emergency medicine. The focus is on the basic minimum emergency medicine educational content that any emergency medicine physician specialist should be prepared to deliver on completion of a training programme. It is designed not to be prescriptive but to assist educators and emergency medicine leadership to advance physician education in basic emergency medicine no matter the training venue. The content of this curriculum is relevant not just for communities with mature emergency medicine systems, but in particular for developing nations or for nations seeking to expand emergency medicine within the current educational structure. We anticipate that there will be wide variability in how this curriculum is implemented and taught. This variability will reflect the existing educational milieu, the resources available, and the goals of the institutions' educational leadership with regard to the training of emergency medicine specialists.