Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a cohomology theory for abelian matched pairs of Hopf algebras and to explore its relationship to Sweedler cohomology, to Singer cohomology and to extension theory. An exact sequence connecting these cohomology theories is obtained for a general abelian matched pair of Hopf algebras, generalizing those of Kac and Masuoka for matched pairs of finite groups and finite dimensional Lie algebras. The morphisms in the low degree part of this sequence are given explicitly, enabling concrete computations. In this paper we discuss various cohomology theories for Hopf algebras and their relation to extension theory. It is natural to think of building new algebraic objects from simpler structures, or to get information about the structure of complicated objects by