  The Magellanic Clouds (MCs) are the Milky Way's most massive dwarf
satellites. As they also represent the closest pair of galaxies in an ongoing
tidal interaction, while simultaneously infalling into the Milky Way halo, they
provide a unique opportunity to study in detail an ongoing three-body
encounter. We present the ``YMCA (Yes, Magellanic Clouds Again) survey: probing
the outer regions of the Magellanic system with VST'' based on deep optical
photometry carried out with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). YMCA targeted 110
square degrees, in the g and i filters, in the periphery of both the MCs,
including a long strip in between the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the
Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The photometry of YMCA is sufficiently deep (50\%
complete down to $g \simeq 23.5-24.0$~mag) to allow for a detailed analysis of
main-sequence stars in regions of the MCs remained relatively unexplored at
these faint magnitudes. The resulting colour-magnitude diagrams reveal that the
outskirts of the MCs are predominantly characterized by intermediate-age and
old stellar populations, with limited or negligible evidence of recent star
formation. The analysis of the age distribution of star clusters (SCs) within
the surveyed area, both already known and newly discovered candidates, hints at
a close fly-by between the LMC and SMC that occurred $\simeq 2.5-3.0$~Gyr ago,
in agreement with previous results. We also report the discovery of candidate
SCs with ages within the so-called ``age-gap'', questioning its real existence.
