The world-wide interest in reducing the dependency on fossil fuels demands the development of energy storage systems with high power density from abundant materials, which would enable wide-spread industrial deployment of grid-scale renewable energy systems, as well as the progressive advancement of high-powered electric vehicles (EVs). Perovskite oxide ceramics attracted significant attention as a strong candidate for bi-functional electrocatalyst for metal-air batteries. There has been consistent investigation on the viability of bi-functional electrocatalysts, because energy storage systems cannot operate rechargeably without the proper bi-functional electrocatalyst. Among various electrocatalysts for both oxygen evolution and reduction, making nanoparticles from these materials for practical applications is a great challenge. The newly introduced pervovskite electrocatalyst of ~50 nm size preferentially reduced oxygen to water (< 5 % peroxide yield), exhibited more than 20 times higher gravimetric activity (A/g) than IrO2 in an OER half-cell test, and surpassed the charge/discharge performance of Pt/C (20 wt%) in a zinc-air full cell test. This study describes substantially the systematic engineering of perovskite ceramics into such a bifunctional nanosized electrocatalyst with high stability and activity, which was also explained in detail from the aspect of defect chemistry. Highly efficient bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts are indispensable to the development of highly efficient regenerative fuel cells and rechargeable metal-air batteries, which could power future electric vehicles. Although perovskite oxides are known to have high intrinsic activity, large particle sizes rendered from traditional synthesis routes limit their practical use due to low mass activity. We report the synthesis of nano-sized perovskite particles with a nominal composition of L ax(Ba0.5Sr0.5)1-xCo0.8Fe0.2O3-d (BSCF), where lanthanum concentration and calcination temperature were controlled to influence oxide defect chemistry and particle growth. This approach produced a bifunctional perovskite electrocatalyst of ~50 nm size with supreme activity and stability for both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The electrocatalyst preferentially reduced oxygen to water (<5 % peroxide yield), exhibited more than 20 times higher gravimetric activity (A/g) than IrO2 in an OER half-cell test (0.1 M KOH), and surpassed the charge/discharge performance of Pt/C (20 wt%) in a zinc-air full cell test (6 M KOH).Our work provides a general strategy for designing perovskite oxides as inexpensive, stable and highly active bifunctional electrocatalysts for future electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices.The world-wide interest in reducing the dependency on fossil fuels demands the development of energy storage systems with high power density from abundant materials, which would enable widespread industrial deployment of grid-scale renewable energy systems, as well as the progressive advancement of...