Since 1995, more than 140 planets around solar-type stars have been discovered. The great success of the first decade of observational research in exoplanets, where both the number of planets detected and the number of research groups in the field have grown in parallel, will be followed by a golden age in exoplanet discovery. In the next 15 years, current and planned searches with observatories in space and on the ground will increase this number by at least two orders of magnitude unveiling the distribution of masses, periods and eccentricities of exoplanetary systems. We will possibly see the discovery of Earth-like planets around other stars and major efforts will be conducted to detect signatures of biological activity in their spectra.