Last years the area of linseed in Russian Federation was rapidly increased. The crop was moved to new territories, including North West Region. To answer the demands of agriculture development, breeders started the creation of new linseed varieties, adapted to climatic conditions of this region. The first step of each breeding program is the selection of adequate initial material. Recently introduced to VIR collection 47 linseed varieties and breeding accessions from Czech, France, Canada and the Netherlands, passed 3 years evaluation on the fields of Pushkin laboratories in Leningrad region, on the plots of 1 m2. Parameters of the evaluated genotypes were compared with linseed variety Voronezhskij 1308 as a standard. The weather was different in years of trials. 2015 was warm and dry, 2016 was hot and wet, 2017 was intermediate for temperature and rains. Different weather conditions in years of experiment permitted to select genotypes with stable characters expression. As the North West Region has rather short summer, it is important to use the earliest varieties. The most early ripening accession in all 3 years was k-8870 GZ 2-969 from Czech having vegetative period of 80-87 %% of the standard, that is 74-85 days, which is enough for this region. The most important phase for earliness was the time from flowering to maturity (r = 0,66 – 1,00). Mentioned accession k-8870 from Czech ripened in 31 – 39 days, which is 70-73 % of the standard. Accessions with stable early flowering were not found in current sampling. Another important character for linseed varieties is seeds yield. The most productive varieties in all 3 years of experiments were k-8868 Lola from The Netherlands, k-8865 Baikal from France and k-8614 Jaeger from France. They always exceeded the standard in seeds yield and in favorable conditions gave more than 200 % of standard’s production, up to 500 g. The biggest seeds in all 3 years of evaluation had variety Benvanuto Real, k-8862 from Argentine and k-8835 LS-L 68 from France. It is important, that seeds yield did not have correlations with seeds’ size. It means that breeding for these characters can be carried out independently. The straw of linseed varieties can be used for different purposes, including utilization of its fibre. So for economical reasons it can be important to have high straw yield. Stable exceeding of the standard’s level of the character showed accessions from Czech: kk-8859, 8860, 8870. They gave 600-1500 g. of straw in different conditions. Straw yield is strongly correlated with plants height (r = 82 – 90). So the desirable genotypes can be easily selected at the first steps of breeding. Presented results show the possibility of breeding varieties for effective linseed cultivation in North West Region of Russia at least at 600 latitude.