I will discuss recent progress in perturbative QCD at the 5-loop level. In particular I will present results for the 5-loop anomalous dimensions in QCD, the hadronic higgs decay rates and the R-ratio. These calculations were made possible by recent developments on a generalisation of the BPHZ subtraction scheme to euclidean infra-red divergences: the R* operation. I will discuss both a local and a global approach.