Dark Matter direct searches

Different techniques are currently competing in the direct search of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMP) dark matter, which consists in observing in the laboratory nuclear recoils due to impact of WIMPs from our galactic halo. As an introduction to this Dark Matter session, the experimental context, the key challenges and the different techniques will be briefly summarized. The performance achieved by low-temperature detectors confers to them a leading role in this domain.