Malaria is a devastating parasitic disease for which a vaccine is urgently needed. Seminal studies in the 1940s demonstrated that a whole parasite malaria vaccine could induce protective immunity in ducks and monkeys [1,2]. Nearly 80 years later, only one malaria vaccine (Mosquirix™), albeit one with moderate efficacy, has progressed into Phase III trials and has subsequently been licensed. There are many reasons for why we still do not have a highly effective malaria vaccine including unique aspects of the malaria parasite’s biology and our incomplete understanding of host–pathogen interactions, although our knowledge in this latter area has greatly improved in recent decades and this will facilitate the rational design of vaccine candidates. This special issue of Expert Review of Vaccines devoted to malaria includes reviews of many current, frontline approaches to vaccine development, with expert opinions on sporozoite/liver-stage, blood-stage, and sexual-stage vaccines as well as a review devoted to the special case of pregnancy-associated malaria (PAM). Historically, malaria vaccine development has focused on P. falciparum, due to its associated morbidity and mortality; however, the need for a vaccine for the most geographically wide-spread human malaria parasite, P. vivax, is well recognized and De et al. [3] discuss some of the unique challenges associated with developing a P. vivax vaccine.