Earthquakes have created serious damages to structures. The structures which are already built are vulnerable to future earthquakes. This serious damage to structures can cause deaths, injuries with economic loss. There is an urgent need for seismic assessment of structures. Performance based seismic engineering is a simple and modern approach to earthquake resistant design to achieve desirable and predictable performance of structures. The concept of performance based seismic engineering is becoming future direction for seismic design codes. Nonlinear static pushover analysis is becoming popular tool because of its simplicity with for seismic evaluation of existing and new structures. Many structural engineers are interested in this concept, as it gives better understanding of the structural behavior during the strong earthquake ground motion. The present study gives an overview of past work done in this recently growing concept of performance based seismic assessment using nonlinear static pushover analysis.