Radiative return method as a tool in hadronic physics

A short review of both theoretical and experimental aspects of the radiative return method is presented. It is emphasised that the method gives not only possibility of the independent from the scan method measurement of the hadronic cross section, but also can provide information concerning details of the hadronic interactions. New developments in the PHOKHARA event generator are also reviewed. The 3 pion and kaon pair production is implemented within the version 5.0 of the program, together with contributions of the radiative phi decays to the 2 pion final states. Missing NLO radiative corrections to the e+e- -> mu+ mu- gamma process will be implemented in the forthcoming version of the generator.