It is well established from clinical trials that behavioural interventions can halve the risk of progression from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes but translating this evidence of efficacy into effective real-world interventions at scale is an ongoing challenge. A common suggestion is that future preventive interventions need to be more personalised in order to enhance effectiveness. This review evaluates the degree to which existing interventions are already personalised and outlines how greater personalisation could be achieved through better identification of those at high risk, division of type 2 diabetes into specific subgroups and, above all, more individualisation of the behavioural targets for preventive action. Approaches using more dynamic real-time data are in their scientific infancy. Although these approaches are promising they need longer-term evaluation against clinical outcomes. Whatever personalised preventive approaches for type 2 diabetes are developed in the future, they will need to be complementary to existing individual-level interventions that are being rolled out and that are demonstrably effective. They will also need to ideally synergise with, and at the very least not detract attention from, efforts to develop and implement strategies that impact on type 2 diabetes risk at the societal level. Graphical abstract