Tungsten is the plasma-facing material of choice in several design studies for DEMOs and in development programs for advanced plasma facing components. Use of tungsten in ITER for the divertor and consideration of a full first wall of tungsten have increased the pace of research in fusion on tungsten. This paper characterizes the critical issues in making tungsten work as a plasma-facing material for a DEMO and cites past work as well as current experiments, modeling and materials and component development. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.