The rst BLINK workshop on Benchmarking Linked Data took place in Kobe, Japan on October 18th, 2016 and was hosted by Kobe International Conference Center. The workshop was supported by the HOBBIT project (https://project-hobbit.eu). BLINK provided a forum where topics related to the evaluation (included, but not limited to, expressive power, usability and performance) of Linked Data Technologies for di erent steps of the Big Linked Data Chain can be discussed and elaborated upon. Big Linked Data is starting to enter the new data economy. Systems are constantly being developed in order to support the booming exchange of data (existing in numerous formats) in the Web and the Enterprise. Big Linked Data standards and benchmarks can function as valuable tools to objectively depict and illustrate the level of adequacy and thus performance provided by the existing Linked Data systems. This workshop aimed to bring together a broad range of attendants interested in benchmarking Big Linked Data and aims at identifying collectively the speci c needs and challenges of the domain in order to foster interdisciplinary collaborations towards attaining these challenges. More speci cally the objectives of this workshop were to: Create a discussion forum where researchers and industrials can meet and discuss topics related to the performance of Linked Data systems, and expose and initiate discussions on best practices, di erent application needs and scenarios related to Linked Data management.