Functional hybrids are nanocomporie umterials lying at the interfoce of organic and inorganic realnts, whose high sersatility offers a wide range of possibilities to eloborate tailor-made materials in terms of chemical and physical properties. Because they present several advantogys for derigning materialy for opticol applications (versatile and relativrly facite chemistry, easy shaping and patierning, materials having good mechanical integrity and cacrdlent optical quality), numerous silica or/and silaxane tussed hytirid orgunic-inorganic materiois imve been developed in the past few years. The men striking examples of fonctional hybrids exhibiting emission properties (solid-state dye lasers rare-carth doped hybridslads, electronuminescent devices), absorption properties (photockiomic), nonlinear optical (NLO) porperties (second-order NLO properties, phoiochemical hole burning (PHB), photorefractivity), and sensing are sunimorized in this review.