This special issue aims to advance our understanding of talent management in emerging market economies. The uniqueness of this special issue was that it invited and accepted contributions on talent management in emerging countries at multiple levels. At the macro level, i.e. from a country level perspective, given the prevalence of state intervention in emerging economies, we were interested in understanding the impact of state ownership/intervention on talent management in those markets. From a meso level, i.e. from a firm level perspective, we were interested in empirical evidence, as to how talent management contributes to performance in emerging markets. Finally, at a micro level, i.e. from an individual level, we were interested in empirical work on research topics such as the career expectations of talent in emerging markets, and the factors that determine the attractiveness of employers for employees in emerging markets. The papers that represented contextual data from lesser-represented emerging countries, were included in this special issue. More specifically, these papers contextually represented the emerging countries namely Nepal, Russia, The United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Poland, Iraq and the last study included a collection of data from 19 African countries. We contribute through this editorial piece by comparing the seven papers included in this special issue to both, previous work in the last two decades or so (2000–2022), globally and within International Journal of Human Resource Management, and identify meaningful future research directions.