Observations of source regions of coronal mass ejections have progressed enormously in the past decade with the observations from SOHO and Yohkoh. Progress has been made on understanding magnetic helicity, coronal dimming, coronal waves and flares in terms of their relationship to CMEs. Observations have been used to verify and disagree with models such as tether-cutting, kink instabilities and the breakout model. We will describe the observations, recent models, and how future observations from the Solar-B and STEREO missions will address many unanswered questions.