After years of preparation the second generation of Eurocode 5, the design standard for preparation timber structures, is ready for publication in Europe. It includes many state-of-the-art design approaches and regulations and enables the design of high-performance timber structures. The standard is mostly referring to the use softwood materials, which is due to the prevailing availability of the respective wood resources in Europe and the availability of respective data from tests carried out in the past decades. However, new hardwood species are becoming more prevalent in European forests due to changes in forest management and become available also for structural applicants. In addition, there is also a great interest to apply the standard in other regions outside of Europe with different building traditions, dif-ferent wood-based materials used, and different available wood species. These different species are characterized by different stiffness and strength values and ratios between. This requires an adaption of the design equations in Eurocode 5 in order to guarantee its reliability. In the contribution, the impact of material properties on different design situations, such as end-notched beams and brittle failure modes in connections, is reviewed and the important material characteristics are identified. By adjusting and cali-brating these respective parameters, the design approaches from Eurocode 5 can be applied globally to design safely and economically modern high-performance timber structures from various wood species.