Two special calorimeters are foreseen for the instrumentation of the very forward region of the ILC detector, a luminometer designed to measure the rate of low angle Bhabha scattering events with a precision better than 10−3 and a low polar angle calorimeter, adjacent to the beam-pipe. The latter will be hit by a large amount of beamstrahlung remnants. The amount and shape of these depositions will allow a fast luminosity estimate and the determination of beam parameters. The sensors of this calorimeter must be radiation hard. Both devices will improve the hermeticity of the detector in the search for new particles. Finely segmented and very compact calorimeters will match the requirements. Due to the high occupancy fast front-end electronics is needed. The design of the calorimeters developed and optimised with Monte Carlo simulations is presented. Sensors and readout electronics ASICs have been designed and prototypes are available. Results on the performance of these major components are summarised.