Understanding of the relationship between stress and magnetic properties in nanostructures is of both fundamental and practical interest. In the present paper, we illustrate this statement with some recent research results. First, we will see how the magnetoelastic interaction in Dy films controls the magnetic structure at the nanoscale due to the presence of the structural defects and their associated strain fields. Then, it will be shown how the magnetoelastic contribution can dominate the total anisotropy in epitaxial (100) oriented Cu/Ni/Cu nanowires, where the film patterning process performed to produce the nanowires induces strain changes large enough to favor a net in-plane anisotropy transverse to the lines.