Microquasars: observations and perspectives

Since their discovery nearly two decades ago, microquasars have been studied in great detail. These sources exhibit transient X-ray and gamma-ray emission, and multi-wavelength observa-tions from radio to gamma rays have revealed the existence of correlations and anti-correlations, which have helped to build up an scenario for the understanding of their outbursts. However, there are still several issues that are not understood, and the mechanism for triggering rela-tivistic jets is still a matter of debate. During the last year, we have seen the first unambiguous detection of a microquasar, Cygnus X-3, at energies above 1 GeV by the Fermi and AGILE satellites. This, together with the evidence of VHE emission from Cygnus X-1 obtained by MAGIC, has reinforced the possibility to detect microquasars by ground based Cherenkov tele-scopes. In this talk I will review microquasars from the observational point of view and I will discuss future strategies for their detection at TeV energies.