The 5th International Workshop on Chaos-Fractals Theories and Applications (IWCFTA 2012) will be held on 18th - 21st October 2012. In the past, four workshops were successfully held in Zhangjiajie, Shenyang, Kunming and Hangzhou, China, respectively. Now, we organize the fifth one to bring together leading researchers and experts worldwide to Dalian, China. As in previous workshops, the main purpose of IWCFTA 2012 is to provide a high-level international platform for scientists, researchers and engineers all around the world to present their state-of??the-art achievements in chaos, fractals and complex networks, both theories and applications, including but not limits to chaotic dynamics, complex systems, cryptography, multimedia, bifurcations, chaos, network synchronization, biology, finance, and beyond.