  The paper reviews recent progress in particle identification methods. A
survey of motivations and requirements for particle identification in various
experimental environments is followed by the main emphasis, which is on the
recent development of Cherenkov counters, from upgrades of existing devices to
a novel focusing radiator concept and new photon detectors. The impact of
including a precise measurement of the time of arrival of Cherenkov photons to
increase the kinematical region over which particle identification can be
performed is discussed. The progress in dedicated time-of-flight counters with
recently developed very fast single photon detectors is also evaluated.
