Fire is and has been a dominant disturbance in temperate forests and shrublands of southwestern South America but current and future fire regimes pose significant threats to the long term persistence of sensitive ecosystems and to vulnerable human populations. Here we underscore the prime importance of fire weather, human ignitions and biophysical drivers that explain large-scale and long-term patterns of fire occurrence, severity and frequency. We provide a temporal line of how fire was perceived and used during different cultural/historical periods (pre-settlement, settlement and fire suppression). We review the main life history traits and functional strategies of species in relation to fire as well as the patterns of stand development following fire for the main forest types. At the landscape scale we identify several examples of fire-vegetation feedbacks and alternative stable community states modified by fire. Finally, we synthesize the current state of knowledge of how fire regimes will respond in this region to future climatic scenarios for the twenty-first century and provide some guidelines for adaptation and mitigation of fire impacts and hazards.