The Ginzburg–Landau equations were proposed in the superconductivity theory to describe mathematically the intermediate state of superconductors in which the normal conductivity is mixed with the superconductivity. It turned out that these equations have interesting and non-trivial generalizations. First of all, they can be extended to arbitrary compact Riemann surfaces. Next, they can be generalized to dimension 3 as dynamical (or hyperbolic) Ginzburg–Landau equations. They also have a 4-dimensional extension provided by Seiberg–Witten equations. In this review we describe all these interesting topics together with some unsolved problems.