Photochromic materials are attractive and promising for applications in many fields. One subject in this area is to prepare and study the photochromism in composite or hybrid materials based on transition-metal oxides or polyoxometalates. Their properties not depend only on the chemical nature of each component, but also on the interface and synergy between them. Since the charge transfer plays a key role in the photochromism of these materials, it is very important to increase the charge (electrons, holes, and protons) interactions between the two components in either composites or hybrids. To realize this, one big challenge is to optimize the two components on a molecular or nanometer scale, which is closely relevant to the constituents, sample history (pre-treatment, preparation, and post-treatment), environment (humidity, presence of reducible or oxidizible matters, light-irradiation wavelength, intensity, time, etc.). Based on these, many novel composite or hybrid materials with improved photochromism, visible-light coloration, reversible photochromism, multicolor photochromism or, possibly, fast photoresponse, have been prepared during the last two decades or three. This may underscore the opportunity of using these composite and hybrid materials as the photonic applications. In present paper, we summarize thoroughly all the recent progress in these subjects. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.