After outlining the hierarchical structure of skeletal muscle and its natural regeneration pathways, the strategies developed for engineering skeletal muscle will be reviewed, with an emphasis on 3 key domains: scaffold production, cell types, and the role of external stimuli in tissue maturation., The Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering (MTE) Study Section reviews applications concerned with the replacement or repair of damaged, missing or poorly functioning musculoskeletal tissues, including bone, dental, skeletal muscle, cartilage, tendon, ligament and skin., The field of skeletal muscle tissue engineering has taken great strides since Vandenburgh’s first work in 1988, using cultured avian myotubes in collagen-coated tissue culture plates . Tissue engineering strategies can be divided into two main categories: scaffold-based and scaffold-free approaches., This review summarizes recent advances in the ordered construction of skeletal muscle tissues, and evaluates the impact of engineering strategies on cell behavior and maturation, including biomaterials, manufacturing methods and training means., In this review, we evaluate existing studies on skeletal muscle engineering and the various stimulation techniques explored, including mechanical, electrical, chemical, microgravity, and dual-stimulation methods. By summarizing these findings, we identify the lack of dual-stimulation and compressive stimulation forces as current limitations., Here we review recent advances, current challenges and future perspectives to build human skeletal muscle tissue “in a dish”, focusing on the cellular constituents and on applications for in vitro disease modelling..