Soft gamma repeaters and anomalous X-ray pulsars are thought to be magnetars, neutron stars with very strong magnetic fields. They emit sporadic bursts of hard X-rays and soft gamma rays, including rare energetic events known as giant flares. Quasiperiodic oscillations in the X-ray tails of giant flares and some bursts may be due to excited non-radial modes in the mangetar which could emit gravitational waves. Previous analyses on LIGO data have been performed targeting magnetar bursts for short and long-duration gravitational wave transients. This talk gives an overview of magnetars, their gravitational wave search history, with a focus on the recent long-duration burst searches, and considers the outlook for future searches. This talk will also discuss computational challenges related to the search for gravitational waves from magnetar bursts.