Abstract. We consider the Navier-Stokes equations on a thin domain of the form Ω ε = {x ∈ R 3 ; x 1 , x 2 ∈ (0, 1), 0 < x 3 < εg(x 1 , x 2 )} supplemented with the following mixed boundary conditions: periodic boundary conditions on the lateral boundary and Navier boundary conditions on the top and the bottom. Under the assumption that, 2} and similar assumptions on the forcing term, we show global existence of strong solutions; here u i 0 denotes the i-th component of the initial data u 0 and M is the average in the vertical direction, that is,Moreover, if the initial data, respectively the forcing term, converge to a bidimensional vector field, respectively forcing term, as ε → 0, we prove convergence to a solution of a limiting system which is a Navier-Stokes-like equation where the function g plays an important role. Finally, we compare the attractor of the Navier-Stokes equations with the one of the limiting equation.