Forward and Diffractive Physics at CMS

A rich program of forward physics, including very low-x QCD dynamics, diffraction in the presence of a hard scale and photon-mediated processes, is being studied by the CMS Collaboration, taking advantage of the forward detector instrumentation around the CMS interaction point. We describe here the analyses planned for the first LHC data-taking period, when the istantaneous luminosity will be low ($10^{29}-10^{32}~$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$) and the pile-up negligible. A centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV is assumed.