Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this paper we briefly review the concepts of Neutrino Factories and Beta Beam facilities, and indicate the main challenges in terms of beam performance and technological developments. We also describe the worldwide organizations that have embarked on defining and carrying out the necessary R&D on component design, beam simulations of facility performance, and benchmarking of key subsystems via actual beam tests. Currently approved subsystem tests include the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE), under construction at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and the Mercury Intense Target (MERIT) experiment, to be carried out at CERN. These experiments are briefly described, and their schedules are indicated.