One of the most challenging areas in drug design is the area of new antibacterial drugs. Despite significant progress in target validation and screening programs, discovery of new antibacterial classes is not keeping pace with the growing threat of bacterial resistance. In this review we describe examples of the use of NMR spectroscopy methods in different phases of antibacterial drug design. First, several frequently used liquid and solid-state NMR techniques are presented, followed by a review and discussion of the application of NMR spectroscopy to the discovery of new antibacterial agents.