An overview of current and predicted contrast limits for present and future instruments. The red squares represent directly detected exoplanets, while the blue triangles show contrast predictions for exoplanets detected via radial velocities (targets found in Table 3, assuming an albedo of 0.3). The solid orange lines correspond to three techniques using single-dish telescopes: aperture masking (Stolker et al. 2024), high- contrast imaging combined with high-resolution spectroscopy (Wang et al. 2024), and high-contrast imaging (Chomez et al. 2023). The red lines illustrate the actual capabilities of JWST/NIRCAM (Franson et al. 2024) and GRAVITY (two lines, one for the best and one for the worst orientation of the baselines, Pourré et al. 2024). The dashed lines show predictions for the ELT/HARMONI instrument (Houllé et al. 2021), ELT/PCS (Kasper et al. 2021) and the Roman Space Telescope coronagraph (Bailey et al. 2023). The green and purple solid lines represent the theoretical 3σ contrast limits that could be achieved with the VLTI in 3 hours of observation for the K and I bands, respectively. The shaded regions down to the dotted lines represent the benefits of an extended VLTI configuration, in addition to provide a more homogeneous position angle coverage. In theory, the VLTI’s contrast should reach the contrast range predicted for HARMONI and could also observe targets accessible to the Roman Space Telescope coronagraph. The plotted contrast range of GRAVITY is limited by the capabilities of the old MACAO AO system and systematics, which are expected to be overcome with GRAVITY+.