The article discusses key issues of the origin, development and essence of modern foresight. There is explained three main program of foresight. In scientific –technical programming is the foresight a new event or not, how is it possible to positioning the foresight in strategic planning , is its methodology used at regional level or not, in the paper there are also given the stages of formation of foresight, the parallelization is given between forecast and foresight and it is justified that the participants of foresight create real possibilities not only for forecast, also they discuss the future possible alternatives and develop strategies to implement more promising projects. Methodological issues of foresight are also studied, in particular, normative and exploratory approaches, a wide range of methods used for foresight: Creativity, Expertise and Forecast, Analysis, Interaction –Delphi – Methods of Survey establishment on quality information.