The XYZ exotic states discovered in the hadronic sector with two heavy quarks constitute one of the most important open problems in particle theory. In this talk, I show that an effective field theory derived from QCD, the Born Oppenheimer effective field theory (BOEFT), can describe exotics of any composition. I show the results of general Schr\"odinger coupled equations for arbitrary angular momentum of the light degrees of freedom. The coupled equations describe hybrids, tetraquarks, pentaquarks, doubly heavy baryons, and quarkonia in leading order, including nonadiabatic terms. Additionally, I also present the results of the predicted multiplets, corresponding selection rules, and expressions of the nonperturbative gauge invariant correlators, which are the input of the BOEFT: static energies, generalized Wilson loops, gluelumps, and adjoint mesons that should be calculated on the lattice. Moreover, I show for the first time new results on the behavior of static energies at short distances and mixing with the threshold at long distances based on BOEFT. As an application of this BOEFT, I show results for the hybrid spectrum, hybrid decays to quarkonium and some preliminary results for X(3872) and T_cc (3875).