Despite the strong experimental effort many aspects of neutrinos remain unknown. Given zero electric charge and no color, they may be Majorana particles - fermions which are their own anti-particles. Double-beta decay offers a unique probe for this hypothesis. Finding no neutrinos, but solely two electrons sharing the full available decay energy, would prove lepton number non-conservation and unveil the Majorana character of neutrinos.
The talk will describe the LEGEND experiment which aims to develop a phased 76Ge based double-beta decay experimental program with a discovery potential at a half-life significantly longer than 1027 years. It will profit of the best technologies coming from the GERDA and Majorana Demonstrator experiments. The first step will be LEGEND-200 at LNGS which, using 200 kg of enriched germanium detectors, will improve the GERDA sensitivity by a factor 10. The final step will be LEGEND-1000 a 1 ton experiment able to cover the full parameter space spanned by the inverted ordering scenario.