Pediatric functional MRI has been used for the last 2 decades but is now gaining wide acceptance in the preoperative workup of children with brain tumors and medically refractory epilepsy. This review covers pediatrics-specific difficulties such as sedation and task paradigm selection according to the child's age and cognitive level. We also illustrate the increasing uses of functional MRI in the depiction of cognitive function, neuropsychiatric disorders and response to pharmacological agents. Finally, we review the uses of resting-state fMRI in the evaluation of children and in the detection of epileptogenic regions.