A continuously operating press for the production of particle boards, fiber boards and similar wood boards and plastic boards, has flexible endless steel belts which transmit the pressing pressure, pull the material to be pressed through the press, are guided over driving drums and reversing drums around an upper and a lower press beam and are supported with an adjustable press nip against press/heating platens on the press beams via rolling supporting elements which accompany their revolution and are guided with their axes transverse to the direction of belt running. The lower and/or the upper press/heating platen is vertically adjustable to set the press nip by a plurality of cylinder-piston arrangements arranged in rows transversely to the longitudinal axis of the press. The pressure pistons of the cylinder-piston arrangements each have a multi-surface support to give flexible multi-point introduction of force relative to the elastically deformable press/heating platens and spherical deformation of the press/heating platen over its length and width can be introduced by different forces in the cylinders across the width and/or the length by virtue of the multi-surface support of the cylinder-piston arrangements.