This article aims to review the electroanalytical applications of chemically modified electrodes involving silica and silica-containing matrices. After a brief introduction to silica chemistry, the implication of pure and grafted silicas in electrochemistry, as well as that of the silica-based materials originating from the sol-gel technology, will be discussed. The interest of silica-modified electrodes (SiO 2 -MEs) with respect to electroanalysis will be pointed out by means of several examples. In the last five years, successful applications of SiO 2 -MEs have been achieved. Among them, silica grafted with inorganic films or organic moieties was successfully applied to the selective preconcentration or the electrocatalytic detection of various analytes. Also, the ability of the sol-gel chemistry to encapsulate enzymes within a silica matrix without preventing its activity was exploited in the development of new amperometric biosensors. These promising fields are thought to lead to significant advances in the near future, because of the explosive growth in both the synthesis of novel mesoporous organically-modified silica-based materials and the huge development of sol-gel chemistry in tailoring and construction of new modified electrodes.