Poultry vaccines are widely applied to prevent and control contagious poultry diseases. Their use in poultry production is aimed at avoiding or minimising the emergence of clinical disease at farm level, thus increasing production. Vaccines and vaccination programmes vary broadly in regard to several local factors (e.g. type of production, local pattern of disease, costs and potential losses) and are generally managed by the poultry industry. In the last decade, the financial losses caused by the major epidemic diseases of poultry (avian influenza and Newcastle disease) have been enormous for both the commercial and the public sectors. Thus, vaccination should also be applied in the framework of poultry disease eradication programmes at national or regional levels under the official supervision of public Veterinary Services. This paper provides insight on the use of vaccination for the control of poultry infections, with particular emphasis on the control of transboundary poultry diseases.