In this article we present an overview of the ESA Gaia mission and of the unprecedented impact that Gaia will have on the field of variable star research. We summarise the contents and impact of the first Gaia data release on the description of variability phenomena, with particular emphasis on pulsating star research. The Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution, although limited to 2.1 million stars, has been used in many studies related to pulsating stars. Furthermore a set of 3,194 Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars with their times series have been released. Finally we present the plans for the ongoing study of variable phenomena with Gaia and highlight some of the possible impacts of the second data release on variable, and specifically, pulsating stars.
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