Faced with ongoing forest loss and degradation, the world's decision-makers are turning to forest landscape re- storation (FLR) as a solution to many land use challenges. At the same time, governance is being promoted as an important concept in relation to forests, landscapes, land use and increasingly, FLR. Yet, both terms – governance and FLR - are complex, and their association creates widely differing expectations. In this article, we analyse uses of the term' governance', and in particular, its use in relation to FLR in published articles, as well as related literature on forest governance, landscape governance and environmental governance. Our intention is to better understand how the term' governance' is used in the FLR literature and to demonstrate the diversity of interpretations and under- standings, and subsequent fuzziness in its application. We explore the categories of meanings associated with gov- ernance, and also characterize trends in the use of the term in the FLR literature. Finally, we conclude by identifying specific challenges intrinsic to the concept of FLR related to the landscape, multiple objectives and the influence of multiple spatial and temporal scales, that in turn influence governance of FLR.