Center for Lasers and Photonics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, IndiaOver the past decade, scientists have learned how to manipulate the interaction of radiation withstructured materials to an unprecedented level. For decades, our world was limited to materialswith primarily positive permittivities and permeabilities, with a few exceptions such as plasmas,for example, whose permittivities can be negative. The research in metamaterials coupled withthe rapid advancements in micro- and nanofabrication technologies has removed this limitationand has opened the door to almost arbitrary material properties with some extraordinary con-sequences across the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from radio frequencies to opticalfrequencies. These developments have been strongly complemented by the developments inperiodic dielectric photonic crystals where band-gap effects lead to mind-blowing dispersioncharacteristics and consequent effects. Almost simultaneously, the optics of metals has beenbrought to center-stage where the plasmonic excitations enable the electromagnetic radiationto interact resonantly with the structured material at very small sub-wavelength scales.These interactions prove to be the key to manipulating the optical near-field, and surprisingeffects such as sub-wavelength scale imaging by so-called super-lenses made of negative refrac-tive index or plasmonic materials have been discovered.AfocuseddiscussionmeetingonMetamaterialsandPhotonicNanostructureswasheldatIITKanpur on 16–17 August 2013 to bring researchers working on these topics to a common plat-form and to enable an interactive period for knowledge pooling. One of the intents was to takestock of theworkcarriedout in India in these frontier areas, and most of the activeresearchers inIndia contributed to the meeting. This special section consists of selected papers based on workpresented at the meeting, as well as papers contributed in response to the call for this specialsection.The special section has attracted an interesting collection of works ranging from surfaceenhanced Raman scattering from nanostructured plasmonic systems, interactions between local-ized and propagating surface plasmons in subwavelength gratings, extraordinary transmission instructured plasmonic thin films, anisotropic uniaxial metamaterials and epsilon-zero metamate-rials, fabrication techniques for embedding nondiffracting defect sites, large area nanophotonicstructures and inorganic-organic layered perovskites, to theoretical treatments of third harmonicgeneration in photonic crystals and super-continuum generation in microstructured opticalfibers. The large variety of the topics is reflective of the ever-increasing appeal and applicationsof metamaterials and nanostructured materials across optics.