The present review offers an overview of nonclassical (e.g., with no pre- or in situ activation of a carboxylic acid partner) approaches for the construction of amide bonds. The review aims to comprehensively discuss relevant work, which was mainly done in the field in the last 20 years. Organization of the data follows a subdivision according to substrate classes: catalytic direct formation of amides from carboxylic and amines (section 2); the use of carboxylic acid surrogates (section 3); and the use of amine surrogates (section 4). The ligation strategies (NCL, Staudinger, KAHA, KATs, etc.) that could involve both carboxylic acid and amine surrogates are treated separately in section 5.