Exotica and the confining flux

Recent developments in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) are reviewed on three m ajor topics where nonperturbative gluon excitations of the QCD vacuum and t he physical properties of the confining flux play a central role: (1) New l attice results on the spectrum and wave functions of heavy Q (Q) over bar g luon molecules, known as heavy hybrids, will be discussed. (2) Recent advan ces on the glueball spectrum in lattice QCD will be presented with some the oretical observations. (3) Progress in our understanding of the nonperturba tive internal structure of the confining flux and its excitation spectrum w ill be reported.