West Nile virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus causing to humans a variety of symptoms, from asymptomatic or mild infection, to severe, and often fatal, infection of the central nervous system. The present review aims to describe the main clinical characteristics of the disease, to provide the recent epidemiological data, including those from the recent outbreaks in Greece, and to discuss the environmental factors which might play a role in the virus emergence and its wider dispersal.