Thanks to notable advancements in adaptive optics combined with 
coronagraphic observational strategies, high-contrast imaging techniques 
are rapidly progressing in the current years. The exploration of the 
sub-stellar regime via direct imaging, hampered so far by technical limitations, 
is starting to provide us with a powerful tool, thanks to the advent of 
new-generation instruments, such as e.g., GPI or ScEXAO. SPHERE at VLT is a new 
facility that combining extreme adaptive optics with coronagraphy, dual-band 
imaging, and integral field spectroscopy has recently started its operations 
and aims at revealing relatively massive exoplanets at few tenths of arcsecond
separations and contrasts better than 10^6.
In this contribution I will present recent results obtained with SPHERE in the 
framework of the exoplanet detection and characterisation. Moreover, I will present 
a new system for coronagraphy with high-order adaptive optics that will be operating 
at LBT by the end of 2018: SHARK. This system will provide coronagraphic observations 
from visual to NIR bands, granting a very powerful tool that is not currently 
available for any other instrument in the world.
Finally, I will discuss the employment of a brand-new technique that combines 
high-contrast imaging with high-dispersion spectroscopy, allowing in principle to reach 
contrasts down to 10^10. In the era of E-ELT, this will open the way to investigating 
earth-like planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars.