A fundamental requirement of life is for cells to divide and pass on to their daughters a full complement of genetic material. The centromere of the chromosome is essential for this process, as it provides the DNA sequences on which the kinetochore assembles to allow mitotic chromosome segregation. Kinetochore assembly is subject to epigenetic control, and deciphering how centromeres promote faithful chromosome segregation provides a fascinating challenge. This challenge is made more complex by the scale of metazoan centromeres, thus much research has focused on dissecting centromere function in simple eukaryotes. Interestingly, in spite their similar genome size, budding and fission yeasts have adopted different strategies for passing on chromosomes. Budding yeast have "point" centromeres, where 125 nucleotides is sufficient for mitotic propagation, whereas fission yeast centromeres are more reminiscent of the large repetitive centromeres of metazoans. In addition, centromeric heterochromatin which coats fission yeast and metazoan centromeres and is critical for their function, is absent from budding yeast centromeres. This review focuses on the assembly and maintenance of centromeric chromatin in the fission yeast.