In the last 25 years, chromogenic culture media have found wide-spread application in diagnostic clinical microbiology. In the last decade, therange of media available to clinical laboratories has expanded greatly, allowingspecific detection of additional pathogens, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, group Bstreptococci, Clostridium difficile, Campylobacter spp., and Yersinia enterocolitica. New me-dia have also been developed to screen for pathogens with acquired antimicrobial resis-tance, including vancomycin-resistant enterococci, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacterspp., and Enterobacteriaceae with extended-spectrum ? -lactamases and carbapenemases.This review seeks to explore the utility of chromogenic media in clinical microbiology,with particular attention given to media that have been commercialized in the last de-cade. The impact of laboratory automation and complementary technologies such asmatrix-assisted laser desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOFMS) is also assessed. Finally, the review also seeks to demarcate the role of chromogenicmedia in an era of molecular diagnostics.