A review of the chestnut blight situation in Europe is given. Since its introduction in 1938 into Italy, the blight has spread throughout Europe with the exception of the UK, the Netherlands and northern France. Recently the blight has begun to have much more impact on chestnut in northwest Spain and Portugal. Hypovirulence is widespread. In most countries healing cankers have been observed and the presence of dsRNA has been confirmed. However, hypovirulence is still absent from newly infected areas in northern France, northern Switzerland, Portugal and northwestern Spain. The year of the first observation of healing cankers is weakly correlated with the year of the first occurrence of the blight. Although vc type diversity may be low at a local level, over 40 vc types have been identified in Europe. Vc type EU-2 is dominant in Western Europe whereas EU-12 is dominant in the south. In order not to jeopardise natural biocontrol with hypovirulence, strict quarantine regulations should prevent the introduction of new vc types.