  This paper is dedicated to the memory of Jozsef Zimanyi one of the founders
of the experiment NA49 at the CERN SPS. Firstly, the paper summarizes the main
results of NA49 concerning observation of the onset of deconfinement in central
Pb+Pb collisions at the low SPS energies. Secondly, it sketches the physics
program of NA61 at the CERN SPS, the successor of NA49, which in particular
aims to discover the critical point of strongly interacting matter. Finaly, a
brief review of the future experimental programs in the CERN SPS energy range
is given.
