QCD: are we ready for the LHC?

The LHC energy regime poses a serious challenge to our capability of predicting QCD reactions to the level of accuracy necessary for a successful programme of searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. In these lectures, I'll introduce basic concepts in QCD, and present techniques based on perturbation theory, such as fixed-order and resummed computations, and Monte Carlo simulations. I'll discuss applications of these techniques to hadron-hadron processes, concentrating on recent trends in perturbative QCD aimed at improving our understanding of LHC phenomenology.