We review the tremendous advances in ultrafast X-ray science, over the past 15 years, making the best use of new ultrashort x-ray sources including table-top or large-scale facilities. Different complementary x-ray based techniques, including spectroscopy, scattering and diffraction, are presented. The broad and expanding spectrum of these techniques in the ultrafast time domain, is delivering new insight into the dynamics of molecular systems, of solutions, of solids and of Biosystems. Probing the time evolution of the electronic and structural degrees of freedom of these systems on the timescales of femtosecond to picoseconds delivers new insight into our understanding of dynamical matter.