Direct photon production at HERA, the Tevatron and the LHC

We review several most recent prompt-photon measurements at HERA and the Tevatron and discuss their implication for future measurements at the LHC. A comparison to Monte Carlo models, as well as to NLO QCD predictions based on the standard DGLAP and the kT-factorization approaches is discussed. Effects from renormalization and factorization scale uncertainties, as well as uncertainties on the gluon density distribution inside a proton are discussed.