Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is one of the most common rheumatic conditions, impacting quality of life on several domains. Major breakthroughs have been achieved over the past three decades in the management benefitting the patients' lives. With increasing as well as novel treatment options, clinical registries have been established and continuously evolve to portray patient characteristics, monitor disease activity of RA, effectiveness and safety of the novel compounds. The greatest insights derived from registries is our current knowledge on the risks for malignancies and infections but also extending our knowledge collected in clinical trials on comparative effectiveness, long-term drug utilisation and under-represented populations. Moreover, the possible evolution of registries involving Big Data and AI, and the increased focus on patient centredness is discussed.