Researchers investigating the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for mental health have been primarily focusing on affective disorders, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. Studies involving infected patients, disease survivors, health professionals and lay people across countries and developmental stages have repeatedly highlighted the dramatic psychological consequences of the pandemic. At the same time, the availability of well-established models and measures of wellbeing, developed in the context of positive psychology during the last decades, allowed researchers and practitioners to extensively verify the potential of individual and social resources in buffering the negative consequences of this worldwide health emergency, both in the general population and in the most vulnerable and exposed groups. Wellbeing measures were used from two different perspectives. As concerns subjective wellbeing dimensions, satisfaction with life and happiness levels reported during the pandemic were compared with previously collected national data. Not surprisingly, in most studies a significant decrease was detected in the levels of these dimensions. As concerns eudaimonic wellbeing and optimal functioning, instead, the extraordinary conditions experienced by citizens worldwide represented an opportunity for researchers to pervasively test the conceptual solidity and empirical usefulness of constructs such as resilience, post-traumatic growth, meaning perception and construction, optimism and hope. Findings obtained across countries and populations by means of instruments assessing eudaimonic dimensions of wellbeing provided further evidence of the theoretical and practical contribution of positive psychology to a comprehensive understanding of human experience in emergency conditions, and to the development of interventions not aimed at merely reducing suffering, but at supporting and building personal and community resources. These findings may also help identify conceptual and measurement issues not thoroughly addressed yet, and new directions to be explored by wellbeing researchers and practitioners.