Connections in steel constructions exposed to shear stress, in particular if designed for vibration and/or reversal fatigue stresses, are inevitably designed as slip resistant pre-loaded bolted connections. Strong benefit of these connections is the ability to create fatigue resistance by prevention of slip in the shear plane. Typically, the lifespan of common applications such as steel lattice towers or plant- and bridge constructions ranges from 20 up to 50 years. This requires a robust corrosion protection over the course of a long lasting component design. If the corrosion protection for the steel components is realized by hot-dip galvanizing, low static friction coefficients occur. Costly, yet largely inefficient, follow-up treatments are necessary to increase the friction coefficient in order to achieve greater load capacities. Against this background, a recently completed research project was carried out to show an enhancement of slip resistant pre-loaded bolted connections in conjunction with structural adhesives. The increase in strength in these so called pre-loaded hybrid (bonded/bolted) connections mainly resides in the amount of applied preload. The hybrid connection must be designed in a way that the transverse tensile stresses arising in the adhesive layer are suppressed without exceeding the compressive strength of the adhesive, and without the loss of preload due to relaxation. As in basic adhesively bonded connections, attainable strength levels for pre-loaded hybrid connections are geometry dependent. Thus it is also important to choose an optimal overlap area to reduce stress peaks at the component boundaries. While fundamental characterization of pre-loaded hybrid connections and comparative studies with elementary joining methods were carried out, further investigation is crucial to promote the acceptance of the propagated joining method in steel construction applications. Several open issues need to be investigated experimentally such as long-term behavior, durability and imperfections on the load-bearing capacity. Therefore extensive adhesive selection and characterization is demonstrated in the paper. Ideally, a numerical model for the pre-loaded hybrid connection can be developed with the goal to establish an applicable design concept for planning engineers.