The goal of dental education, since the mid‐19th century when the first Dental Schools appeared in Europe and America, has been to produce dentists able to carry out established dental therapies and serve the needs of patients. The range of content of Dental Education has been changing radically every 20–30 years, but especially in the last half of the 20th century, the need for constant reassessment, modification and amendment of dental curricula became apparent.Hence, after the 1950s it became clear that dental curricula were not able to provide the breadth of knowledge and clinical expertise that had accumulated in certain areas in dentistry, such as oral surgery and orthodontics. This resulted in the appreciation of the need for organising and establishing university or non‐university courses which would provide dentists with the additional specialised knowledge within a timeframe of two and later three years.This marked the birth of postgraduate programmes. Fifty years later, and based on the experience that has accumulated mainly from the ‘dentally developed’ countries in Western Europe and USA we can say that the ‘philosophy’ of dental postgraduate education remains largely the same. In other words, the main aim of postgraduate programmes remains to provide knowledge and practical skills in specialised areas of dentistry with the purpose of creating (i) clinical practitioners specialised in specific areas (specialisation, specialty) and (ii) general dentists with a strong scientific background, able to provide original research in basic sciences and with the necessary training and experience in organising and delivering dental education.As a general rule, postgraduate education is not antagonistic to undergraduate education, but on the contrary, it represents an extension of the knowledge acquired in undergraduate education into specific areas of interest and in certain directions. It is generally accepted that advanced postgraduate education can be successfully accomplished only on the basis of a complete, well‐organised undergraduate education. In the absence of this basis, the effectiveness of postgraduate programmes in succeeding in their goals can only be limited. This has been proved many times, at least in the USA, during the final evaluation (final performance) of postgraduate students coming from ‘dentally developed’ countries, in comparison with students having a low level of undergraduate education. Hence at the beginning of the 21st century, we can affirm that the efforts for good administration, high curriculum level and clear goals of postgraduate studies must be based on a well‐structured, well‐functioning and productive undergraduate dental education systems.