Liquid chromatography on enantioselective sorbents offers the possibility of exploiting circular dichroism (CD) to obtain spectra on-line, i.e. without preparative enrichment of the species of interest. The simplest ‘stop-flow’ procedure requires the chromatographic flow to be stopped at the peak maximum for the optically active material of interest; during this period, a CD spectrum is obtained under normal scanning conditions. In the more complex mode, CD spectra are acquired by ‘non-stop’ rapid-scanning of sequential spectra by means of a multiwavelength CD detector. In this overview, the future of chiroptical detection in separation science is discussed with reference to the wide variety of chiral molecules of current interest in the fields of chemistry, pharmacy and biology.