This article is concerned with the study of gauge theory, stability and moduli for twisted quiver bundles in algebraic geometry. We review natural vortex equations for twisted quiver bundles and their link with a stability condition. Then we provide a brief overview of their relevance to other geometric problems and explain how quiver bundles can be viewed as sheaves of modules over a sheaf of associative algebras and why this view point is useful, e.g., in their deformation theory. Next we explain the main steps of an algebro-geometric construction of their moduli spaces. Finally, we focus on the special case of holomorphic chains over Riemann surfaces, providing some basic links with quiver representation theory. Combined with the analysis of the homological algebra of quiver sheaves and modules, these links provide a criterion for smoothness of the moduli spaces and tools to study their variation with respect to stability.Keywords Quiver bundle · Vortex equations · Moduli space · Stability · Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 14D20 · 16G20 · 14F05 · 32L05 · 53C07 This article is a review of several results about quiver bundles in algebraic and complex geometry, with emphasis on their gauge-theoretic equations, the algebro-geometric construction of their moduli spaces and some applications.A quiver, or directed graph, is a pair of sets Q = (Q 0 , Q 1 ) together with two maps h, t : Q 1 → Q 0 . The elements of Q 0 and Q 1 are respectively called the vertices and the arrows of the quiver. For each arrow a ∈ Q 1 , the vertices v = ta and w = ha are respectively called the tail and the head of the arrow a, which is denoted by a : v → w. We will always assume that the quiver is finite, i.e. the sets Q 0 and Q 1 are finite.Quivers provide concrete descriptions for many interesting categories in terms of their representations. A representation (E, φ) of Q in a category A is the data given by an L. Álvarez-Cónsul (B) Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (CSIC-UAM-UC3M-UCM), Serrano 113 bis,