Primary care services are a critical component of high-performing healthcare systems, providing first contact, coordinated, comprehensive, continuous person-centred care to individuals in a family and community context. During the COVID-19 pandemic, primary care led health system responses in many countries, alongside public health actions and hospital and critical care service planning. As COVID-19 transmission increased, its impact has been increasingly felt at the community level, highlighting the importance of primary care services and the need for comprehensive, integrated strategies that extend beyond tertiary level services, and integrate with public health responses. In some countries, general practice or family medicine and other community-based primary care settings have been serving as the frontline of the pandemic, offering essential strategic functions through the provision of accessible first contact care, enabling system adaptation and robust system-level responses to the range of healthcare needs that emerged. Based on reviews of the international literature, this keynote presentation will highlight the contributions made by primary care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact that the pandemic has had on primary care, and the possible implications of this experience for future primary care reforms.