<p>Corrosion remains a critical challenge across industrial sectors and significantly affecting global economic and environmental burden. Conventional synthetic corrosion inhibitors face limitations such as toxicity, poor long-term stability and decrement of efficiency at elevated temperatures. The emergence of nanotechnology for corrosion control offers promising advances by tailoring surface properties and enabling multifunctional protective mechanisms. Seeing their potential in corrosion mitigation, nanomaterials have been explored in recent years for both coating-phase and aqueous-phase applications to improve corrosion resistance and responsiveness. This review discussed a wide range of nanomaterials exploring their mechanism and abilities in enhancing barrier properties, passivation, controlled ion release and self-healing properties. Besides that, recently reported coatings such as superhydrophobic, smart coatings and green sustainable inhibitors were also deeply discussed, especially on their inhibition mechanisms, advantages and limitations. Moreover, industrial relevance analysis, particularly in the applications of oil and gas, marine, and aerospace industry were also explored in this review, addressing specific demands based on each industrial working conditions' challenges. Nevertheless, challenges persist in scaling up production, ensuring long-term durability and managing environmental impacts. This review concluded by identifying future directions, particularly in multiscale modelling, predictive corrosion analytics and smart materials development. Comprehensively, nanotechnology showed high potential toward high-performance and sustainable corrosion mitigation strategies.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>