The FEMTO source under construction at the μXAS beamline is designed to enable tunable time‐resolved laser/x‐ray absorption and diffraction experiments in photochemistry and condensed matter with ps‐ and sub‐ps resolution. The design takes advantage of (1) the highly stable operation of the SLS storage ring, (2) the reliable high harmonic operation of small gap, short period undulators to generate hard x‐rays with energy 3–18 keV at 2.4 GeV beam energy, and (3) the progress in high power, high repetition rate fs solid‐state laser technology to employ laser/e‐beam ‘slicing’ to reach a time resolution of ultimately 100 fs. The source will profit from the inherently synchronized pump (laser I: 100 fs, 2 mJ, 1 kHz) and probe (sliced X‐rays, laser II: 50 fs, 5 mJ, 1 kHz) pulses, and from the excellent stability of the SLS storage ring which is operated in top‐up mode and controlled by a fast orbit feedback (FOFB). Coherent radiation emitted at THz frequencies by the sliced 100 fs electron bunches will be monitored as on‐line cross‐correlation signal to keep the laser‐electron beam interaction at optimum. The source is designed to provide at 8 keV (100 fs) a monochromized flux of 104 ph/s/0.01% bw (Si crystal monochromator) and 106 ph/s/1.5% bw (multilayer monochromator) at the sample. It is operated in parasitic mode using a hybrid bunch filling pattern. Because of the low intensity measurements are carried out repetitively over many shots using refreshing samples and gated detectors. ‘Diffraction gating’ experiments will be used to characterize the sub‐ps X‐ray pulses.