Abstract This paper deals with stability analysis of hybrid systems. Various stability concepts related to hybrid systems are introduced. The paper advocates a local analysis. It involves the equivalence relation generated by reset maps of a hybrid system. To establish a tangible method for stability analysis, we introduce the notion of a chart, which locally reduces the complexity of the hybrid system. In a chart, a hybrid system is particularly simple and can be analyzed with the use of methods borrowed from the theory of differential inclusions. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is to show how stability of a hybrid system can be reduced to a specialization of the well established stability theory of differential inclusions. A number of examples illustrate the concepts introduced in the paper.