<p>Aptamers, short oligonucleotide strands hold excellent potential for diverse applications in the field of biomedicine and bioanalytics such as drug delivery, bioimaging, biosensors, therapy and theranostics, thereby emerging as potential alternatives to antibodies. Since the introduction of SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) approach to screen and amplify the target specific oligonucleotide strands, extensive research has been conducted on aptamers for their utilization in diagnosis and therapy. Thus with rapid growth in aptamer technology and progress in SELEX approach has led to the development of several SELEX variants to mitigate the difficulties faced by traditional SELEX. One such variant is nanoparticles mediated SELEX which involves the utilization of nanoparticles such as graphene oxide (GO), gold nanoparticles (GNPs), magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) etc. as supporting matrices to facilitate library immobilization; assay indicators to promote real time monitoring of enrichment, and label free characterization of screened aptamer. In this context, it is imperative to critically review the application of nanoparticles in screening and selection of aptamers towards target molecules. Therefore, the present review firstly details about the structural characteristics of aptamers, the conventional SELEX method and outlines the pros and cons of various advanced SELEX variants. Later, the review emphasizes the nanoparticles-mediated SELEX to provide a holistic view on how the nanoparticles play a critical role in SELEX process for screening the aptamers for diverse analytes viz. toxins, viruses, chemical compounds, pesticides, tumor markers, etc. Finally, the review presents the perspective on the nanoparticle mediated SELEX approach, delineating the challenges faced by this approach and feasible solutions for SELEX improvement.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>