The Diels-Alder reaction has long been established as an extremely useful procedure in the toolbox of natural product chemists. It tolerates a wide spectrum of building blocks of different complexity and degrees of derivatization, and enables the formation of six-membered rings with well-defined stereochemistry. In recent years, many total syntheses of natural products have been reported that rely, at some point, on the use of a [4+2]-cycloaddition step. Among classic approaches, several modifications of the Diels-Alder reaction, such as hetero-Diels-Alder reactions, dehydro-Diels-Alder reactions and domino-Diels-Alder reactions, have been employed to extend the scope of this process in the synthesis of natural products. Our short review covers applications of the Diels-Alder reaction in natural product syntheses between 2017 and 2020, as well as selected methodologies which are inspired by, or that can be used to access natural products. 1 Introduction 2 Syntheses from 2017 3 Syntheses from 2018 4 Syntheses from 2019 5 Syntheses from 2020 6 Conclusion. © 2021 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved