The near-infrared view of galaxy evolution

Near-infrared surveys provide one of the best opportunities to investigate the cosmic evolution of galaxies and their mass assembly. We briefly review the main results obtained so far with the K20 and other recent near-IR surveys on the redshift distribution, the evolution of the luminosity function and luminosity density, the nature of old and dusty EROs, the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function, the properties of the galaxies in the ``redshift desert'' and the nature of luminous starbursts at z~2.