Nowadays, nanomaterials are considered a pivotal tool for different fields such as textiles, energy, environment, electronics, photonics, food, agriculture, biomedicine and health care. This is due to their advantageous properties coming from their high surface area, among other physicochemical properties, compared to their respective bulk forms. Nanomaterials, while used in (bio)detection systems, have shown to be extremely valuable to improve the analytical performance of conventional/laboratory methods and move forward biosensing technology. The usage of nanomaterials has been widely spread over the last few years mainly thanks to the great advantages that they offer in the development of conceptually new biosensors or improving the existing ones. This review focuses on how the usage of different nanomaterials have impacted biosensing research underscoring two different types of receptors, including biological receptors such as antibodies and non-biological receptors like molecularly imprinted polymers. The performance of relevant biosensing platforms including lateral flow devices as well as other optical and electrochemical approaches integrating nanomaterials and (bio) receptors are also discussed.