Hydrogen production plays a very important role in the development of hydrogen economy. One of the promising hydrogen production approaches is conversion from biomass, which is abundant, clean and renewable. Alternative thermochemical (pyrolysis and gasification) and biological (biophotolysis, water-gas shift reaction and fermentation) processes can be practically applied to produce hydrogen. This paper gives an overview of these technologies for hydrogen production from biomass. The future development will also be addressed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.