Donaldson and Chen introduced the J-functional in '99, and explained its importance in the existence problem for constant scalar curvature metrics on compact Kahler manifolds. An important open problem is to find algebro-geometric conditions under which the J-functional has a critical point. The critical points of the J-functional are described by a fully-nonlinear PDE called the J-equation. I will discuss some recent progress on this problem, and indicate the role of algebraic geometry in proving estimates for the J-equation.