The report gives an extensive overview of the scientific and technical progress in 2018 and also summarizes the near and long term goals and the competition for the full experiment.

The PANDA experiment at the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will address fundamental questions of hadron physics with unprecedented precision. To reach this goal excellent Particle Identification (PID) is essential over a large range of particle momenta and solid angles. Most of the phase space will be covered by two innovative DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detectors. The Endcap Disc DIRC and Barrel DIRC will cover the polar angle range from 5 to 22$^\circ$ and 22 to 140$^\circ$, respectively. Both detectors rely on high precision optical components, lifetime-enhanced Microchannel Plate PMTs (MCP-PMTs), and fast readout electronics.

The future PANDA experiment with a next generation detector will focus on hadron spectroscopy. It will use cooled anti-proton beams with a momentum between 1.5 GeV/c and 15 GeV/c interacting with various targets. This allows to direct form all states of all quantum numbers and measure there widths with an accuracy of a few tens of keV The experiment will be located at the Facility for Anti-Proton and Ion Research in Germany, which is currently under construction. The electromagnetic target calorimeter of the PANDA experiment has the challenging aim to detect high energy photons with excellent energy resolution over the full dynamic range from 15 GeV down to a few tens of MeV inside a 2T solenoid. To reach this goal, improved PbWO 4 scintillator crystals (PWO-II) cooled down to −25°C have been chosen. They provide a fast decay time for highest count rates, short radiation length for compactness, improved light yield for lowest thresholds and excellent radiation hardness. The target calorimeter itself is divided into a barrel shaped structure and two endcaps. Individual crystals will be read out with two precisely matched large area avalanche photo diodes. In the very inner part of the forward endcap, vacuum phototetrodes will be used instead. The talk will give an overview of the PANDA experiment and focuses on its calorimeter including the scintillator material and the production status. Furthermore, the construction and assembly procedure will be presented. This work was upported by the BMBF.