A major challenge in medicine is to understand genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying common mental disorders including schizophrenia, which involve complicated genetic and environmental determinants. Schizophrenia is a common mental disorder, affecting 0.5-1% of the population. Schizophrenia mostly presents with several episodes and tends to become chronic. Approximately 30% of patients with schizophrenia require support throughout their lives. Roughly 50% will have lifelong disabilities and social problems. Its direct costs in western countries range between 1.6-2.6% of total health care expenditures. The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in human genetics of complex diseases. The knowledge resulting from the availability of the complete sequence of the human genome, the systematic identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) throughout the genome, and the development of parallel genotyping technology (microarrays) established the conditions that brought about the current revolution in our ability to probe the genome for identifying disease genes. Genome-wide association (GWA) studies have opened a window into the biology of common complex diseases and have provided proof of principle and yielded several genes showing strong association with complex diseases or traits including Crohn’s disease, diabetes and many others. These studies revealed genes involved in pathogenesis and identified entirely unexpected disease pathways. This is of utmost importance given that this knowledge can translate into the development of better treatment or even cure. The talk will especially focus on new found common and rare genetic variants presenting the newest and most promising results from large genome-wide efforts including tens of thousands of patients and controls.