The utility of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) in predicting excitation energies is tested for the low lying excited states of F-2, a system that has posed severe challenges to ab initio quantum theory. It is shown that TDDFT using B3LYP functional predicts the excitation energies in good agreement with experiment. In some cases, the agreement is better than that for the post-Hartree-Fock methods like CASSCF and MRCI. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.