Abstract: We review recent progress and lingering obstacles in the field of perturbative QCD. Issues which require further study before the turn-on of the LHC are identified and discussed. We present new ideas for handling the infrared singularities of next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) amplitudes, which until recently have prevented high precision phenomenological results for realistic observables from being obtained. We present NNLO results for Drell-Yan and Higgs production at hadron colliders, which account for all experimental constraints.