Inflammation is a multicomponent response to tissue stress, injury and infection, and a crucial point of its control is at the level of gene transcription. The inducible inflammatory gene expression programme — such as that triggered by Toll-like receptor signalling in macrophages — is comprised of several coordinately regulated sets of genes that encode key functional programmes; these are controlled by three classes of transcription factors, as well as various transcriptional co-regulators and chromatin modifications. Here, we discuss the mechanisms of and the emerging principles in the transcriptional regulation of inflammatory responses in diverse physiological settings.