The Low Frequency ARray (LOFAR) is the world’s largest effort to explore the radio sky at long wavelengths and is leading the rapid evolution of modern low-frequency radio astronomy on the path to the low frequency SKA. LOFAR is an new generation aperture synthesis array distributed on continental scale in Europe across the Netherlands, Germany, UK, France, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, and Latvia. Due to the unprecedented high processing and bandwidth requirements, innovative approaches for data transfer, handling and analysis are being driven making this radio telescope a unique laboratory to understand the modeling of ionospheric effects and calibration of long-baseline data at low frequencies. After an introduction to the LOFAR radio telescope and to the most important challenges for data transfer, calibration and imaging, I will focus on the most relevant LOFAR Key Science Projects. In particular I will make use of the recent achievements on galaxy clusters and radio galaxies to demonstrate the potential of LOFAR observations in producing a breaktrough in many areas of astrophysis and astrophysical plasmas in the next years. In the final part of the talk I will describe the ongoing actions carried out by INAF to join LOFAR and its upgrade to LOFAR 2.0. I will briefly discuss the status of the negotiations, the Italian roadmap and the opportunities for our community.