A number of technologies have been developed over the years for heavy crude and residue oil upgrading, which include processes that are based on carbon rejection, hydrogen addition and combination of both routes [1,2], most of them with proven commercial experience. Fig. 1 summarizes the distribution of these technologies and their processing capacity. Carbon rejection processes represent 56.6% of the total worldwide processing capacity mainly due to its relative low investment. There are also other technologies at different level of development or close to commercialization or even already used, that have been abandoned as uncompetitive during the years of cheap crude oil. The changing prices of crude oils as well as the increasing production of heavy and extra-heavy crude oils have motivated more research and development aiming at upgrading of such heavy mate-rials. The new approaches are named emerging technologies. This group of technologies is reviewed in this work and their advantages,disadvantages and current situation are highlighted