Abstract The bark and ambrosia beetle fauna (Scolytinae) of Peru is reviewed. Examination of ∼8,000 museum and recently collected specimens and a literature review yielded 106 new country records among 248 species distributed among 56 genera and 15 tribes. Our findings for Peru increase the reported species diversity by ∼75%. Despite this thorough review, at least a hundred more Peruvian species remain to be identified or described. The geographic ranges of some species were discovered to extend more than 1,500 km from Central America or the Guyana Shield to southern Peru. It is unknown if these populations are disjunct or if they represent cryptic species. Our results suggest that only 25% of the South American scolytine fauna is known. A new synonymy of Gymnochilus glaber (Schedl, 1951) = Scolytodes schoenmanni Wood, 2007 is proposed.