The grass family Poaceae is among the largest and most successful plant families, both ecologically and economically. It covers a wide geographic, climatic, and ecological range and contains many of the world's most important crops including wheat, barley, rice, maize, and sorghum, as well as many forage and biofuel species. Both wild and cultivated grasses are diverse in areas that regularly experience cold and freezing as well as high seasonality, harsh winters, and short growing seasons. Grasses growing in these environments have evolved an arsenal of strategies to tolerate or resist cold stress, or to escape the cold by phenological adjustments. Here, we review the current knowledge of cold adaptations in grasses synthesising across the disciplines of stress physiology, genetics, metabolomics, ecology, and evolution, in both wild and cultivated species. Specifically, we explore what is known about molecular and physiological cold stress responses, how these might have evolved and their role in shaping diversification and distribution patterns of grasses. We argue that integrating insights from multiple disciplines will further our understanding of cold adaptation.