We study the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of powers of edge ideals for arbitrary (finite simple) graphs. It has been repeatedly conjectured that for every graph G, reg(I(G) s ) ⩽ 2s + reg I(G) − 2 for all s ⩾ 2, which is the best possible upper bound for any s. We prove this conjecture for every s for all bipartite graphs, and for s = 2 for all graphs. The s = 2 case is crucial for our work and suspension plays a key role in its proof.