Adaptive control is a control methodology capable of dealing with uncertain systems to ensure desired control performance. This paper provides an overview of some fundamental theoretical aspects and technical issues of multivariable adaptive control, and a thorough presentation of various adaptive control schemes for multi-input-multi-output systems, literature reviews on adaptive control foundations and multivariable adaptive control methods, and related technical problems. It covers some basic concepts and issues such as certainty equivalence, stability, tracking, robustness, and parameter convergence. It discusses some of the most important topics of adaptive control: plant uncertainty parametrization, stable controller adaptation, and design conditions for different adaptive control schemes. The paper also presents a detailed study of well-developed multivariable model reference adaptive control theory and design techniques. It provides an introduction to multivariable adaptive pole placement and adaptive nonlinear control, and it concludes by identifying some open research problems. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.