In this competitive business world one way to increase profitability of a power production unit is to reduce the operation and maintenance expenses. This is possible if the gas turbine availability and reliability is improved using the appropriate maintenance action at the right time. In that case, fault diagnostics is very critical and effective and advanced methods are essential. Gas turbine diagnostics has been studied for the past six decades and several methods are introduced. This paper aims to review and summarise the published literature on gas path diagnostics, giving more emphasis to the recent developments, and identify advantages and limitations of the methods so that beginners in diagnostics can easily be introduced. Towards this end, this paper, identifies various diagnostic methods and point out their pros and cons. Finally, the paper concludes the review along with some recommended future works. © 2016 The Authors, published by EDP Sciences.