The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a search for small transiting exoplanets around bright stars. It employs an array of twelve 20cm robotic telescopes that are currently undergoing commissioning at the ESO Paranal observatory. The exceptional photometric quality of the Paranal site should allow exoplanets to be detected down to super-Earth sizes. Our goal is to find a significant sample of such objects around stars that are bright enough for confirmation and mass determination by the radial velocity technique using ESO facilities. This will allow us to study the diversity of internal compositions of Neptunes and super-Earths, and the brightest objects will be suitable for atmospheric characterization with the VLT, JWST and E-ELT.