AbstractThe overall, macroscopic constitutive behavior of most materials of technological importance such as fiber-reinforced composites or polycrystals is very much influenced by the underlying microstructure. The latter is usually complex and heterogeneous in nature, where each phase constituent is governed by non-linear constitutive relations. In order to capture such micro-structural characteristics, numerical two-scale methods are often used. The purpose of the current work is to provide an overview of state-of-the-art finite element (FE) and FFT-based two-scale computational modeling of microstructure evolution and macroscopic material behavior. Spahn et al. (Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 268:871–883, 2014) were the first to introduce this kind of FE-FFT-based methodology, which has emerged as an efficient and accurate tool to model complex materials across the scales in the recent years.