Yttrium aluminium garnet Y3Al5O12 (YAG) is a widely used phosphor host. Its optical properties are tuned by chemical substitution at its YO8 or AlO6/AlO4 sublattices, with emission wavelengths defined by a finite number of rare-earth (YO8 sublattice) and transition-metal (AlO6/AlO4 sublattice) dopants which have been explored extensively. Non-stoichiometric compositions Y3+xAl5-xO12 (x ≠ 0) may offer a route to new emission wavelengths by distributing dopants over multiple crystallographic sites, but deviation from Y3Al5O12 stoichiometry is difficult to achieve and limited generally to ≤ 1% excess Y 3+ .Here we report a series of highly non-stoichiometric YAG ceramics Y3+xAl5-xO12 (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.4), with up to 20% of the AlO6 sublattice substituted by Y 3+ , synthesised by advanced melt-quenching techniques. This impacts the up-conversion luminescence of Yb 3+ /Er 3+ -doped systems, whose yellow-green emission differs from the red-orange emission of their stoichiometric counterparts. This contrasts with YAG:Ce 3+ where the dopant ions occupy the YO8 sublattice exclusively, with down-conversion luminescence that is hardly affected by host non-stoichiometry. Beyond YAG, analogous highly nonstoichiometric systems should be obtainable for a range of functional garnets, demonstrated here by the successful synthesis of Gd3.2Al4.8O12 and Gd3.2Ga4.8O12. This opens the way to property tuning by control of garnet host stoichiometry, and the prospect of improved performance or new applications for garnet-type materials.Yttrium aluminium garnet Y3Al5O12 (YAG) is a widely used phosphor host material with notable commercial and technological applications in white LED lighting 1 , scintillation detectors 2 and solid state lasers. 3 Its crystal structure, of general formula A3B5O12, contains three A cations (Y 3+ ) per formula unit exclusively in 8-fold dodecahedral coordination by oxide (YO8), with five B cations (Al 3+ ) distributed between two octahedral (AlO6) and three tetrahedral (AlO4) sites. This provides chemical versatility, as the Y 3+ site can accommodate rare earth (RE 3+ ) dopants with a range of ionic radii spanning most of the lanthanide series, whilst the Al 3+ sites may be substituted by other transitionand post-transition metals, producing a range of characteristic emission bands that underpin its applications. This versatility can lead to relatively complex systems such as Y3Al2Ga3O12, where Ce 3+ and Cr 3+ can be co-substituted with tuning of the Al 3+ /Ga 3+ ratio to generate high performance persistent phosphors. 4,5 Whilst A and B sites can host many different substituents, the structure is far less tolerant of deviations from A3B5O12 stoichiometry, to the extent that YAG is often considered as an archetypal line phase. Nevertheless, off-stoichiometric (as opposed to highly non-stoichiometric) Y-rich single crystals have been reported by melt-growth of aluminate and gallate garnets, [6][7][8] with the presence of ≤ 1 at.% excess Y 3+ at the Al 3+ sublattice inferred spectroscopically, 7,8 consistent with theo...