Abstract: The DNA damage checkpoint is a stress response pathway detecting pathological structures of nuclear DNA and inducing appropriate responses. These responses include cell cycle arrests, histone modifications, changes in the transcription programme and post-translational modifications of proteins involved in DNA repair. Inactivation of the DNA damage checkpoint responses can occur under two circumstances: either DNA damage has disappeared and the whole pathway is inactivated in a process termed recovery, or DNA damage persists but all or part of the pathway is nevertheless inactivated, which is called adaptation. We present here a review of these inactivating processes of the DNA damage checkpoint primarily in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae but also with reference to studies in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and in animal cells.