AbstractThis article considers the extension of well‐known discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element formulations to elliptic problems with periodic boundary conditions. Such problems routinely appear in a number of applications, particularly in homogenization of composite materials. We propose an approach in which the periodicity constraint is incorporated weakly in the variational formulation of the problem. Both H1 and L2 error estimates are presented. A numerical example confirming theoretical estimates is shown. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2007