Our understanding of the nature of the stellar populations living in the central kiloparsecs of the Milky Way has dramatically evolved over the last decade. The availability of large stellar samples from photometric, astrometric and spectroscopic surveys has provided the means to attempt a statistical sampling of the properties of the bulge's resolved stellar populations. In particular, more recent photometric and spectroscopic campaigns in the near-infrared have allowed to pierce through the dust veil to explore the most obscured bulge regions down to the midplane. From the exploitation and combination of these different datasets a state-of-the art observational picture of the bulge has emerged: the bulge is a very complex region of the Galaxy, with the concurrence of at least two different components, and with properties suggesting a complex formation and evolutionary history. In this talk, I will summarize and discuss some results concerning the chemistry, spatial distribution and kinematics of bulge stars as obtained from the analysis of optical (Gaia-ESO Survey, GIBS) and NIR (APOGEE) spectroscopic data. Focus will be given to the complementary nature of these efforts, the main agreements/disagreements of their results, the learned lessons, and how some pending issues are motivating the science cases of future surveys, such as the MOONS Galactic Survey.