  Although numerous archival XMM-Newton observations existed towards the Small
Magellanic Cloud (SMC) before 2009, only a fraction of the whole galaxy was
covered. Between May 2009 and March 2010 we carried out an XMM-Newton survey of
the SMC, in order to obtain a complete overage of both its bar and wing.
Thirty-three observations of 30 different fields with a total exposure of about
ne Ms filled the missing parts. We systematically processed all available SMC
data from the European Photon Imaging Camera. After rejecting observations with
very high background we included 53 archival and the 33 survey observations. We
produced images in five different energy bands. We applied astrometric
boresight corrections using secure identifications of X-ray sources and combine
all the images to produce a mosaic, which covers the main body of the SMC. We
present an overview of the XMM-Newton observations, describe their analysis and
summarise first results which will be presented in follow-up papers in detail.
Here, we mainly focus on extended X-ray sources like supernova remnants (SNRs)
and clusters of galaxies which are seen in our X-ray images. The XMM-Newton
survey represents the deepest complete survey of the SMC in the 0.15-12.0 keV
X-ray band. We propose three new SNRs with low surface brightness of a few
10^-14 erg s^-1 cm^-2 arcmin^-2 and large extent. Also several known remnants
appear larger than previously measured from X-rays or other wavelengths
extending the size distribution of SMC SNRs to larger values.
