This document reports on the present status of the conceptual design of the Spectroscopy and Coherent Scattering (SCS) scientific instrument at European XFEL. The SCS instrument is one of the six baseline instruments of the facility. It will cover a large range of scientific areas in the soft X-ray energy range of 0.25–3 keV, provide instrumentation that opens new scientific directions taking advantage of the unique European XFEL properties, and serve a broad scientific user community. As such, the SCS instrument aims to provide a diverse and complementary instrumental infrastructure with the baseline focus on solid-state systems.