The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider is a major upgrade of the KEK “B factory” facility in Tsukuba, Japan aiming at an increase of the instantaneous luminosity by a factor of 40 to a record-breaking value of $8\times10^{35} \ \mathrm{cm^{-2}s^{-1}}$. Commissioning of the SuperKEKB main ring took place in the first half of 2016 and during summer 2017, first cosmic ray data was taken to test the detector components and the data acquisition.

Phase 2 of the commissioning will start in early 2018 with the goal to accumulate data for early physics analyses at different center-of-mass energies, e.g. $\Upsilon(6S)$. Phase 3 is scheduled to begin at the end of 2018/beginning 2019 and will primarily run on the $\Upsilon(4S)$ energy.

This talk will describe both the physics program focusing on the opportunities for bottomonium and charmonium spectroscopy, as well as for exotic bottomonium states in this early data taking period and phase 3.

Pertubative and nonperturbative QCD