For Maxwell’s equations with nonlinear polarization we prove the existence of time-periodic breather solutions travelling along slab or cylindrical waveguides. The solutions are TE-modes which are localized in one (slab case) or both (cylindrical case) space directions orthogonal to the direction of propagation. We assume a magnetically inactive and electrically nonlinear material law with a linear $\chi^{(1)}$- and a cubic $\chi^{(3)}$-contribution to the polarization. The $\chi^{(1)}$-contribution may be retarded in time or instantaneous whereas the $\chi^{(3)}$-contribution is always assumed to be retarded in time. We consider two different cubic nonlinearities which provide a variational structure under suitable assumptions on the retardation kernels, in particular we require that for time-periodic solutions Maxwell’s equations are invariant under time-inversion. By choosing a sufficiently small propagation speed along the waveguide the second order formulation of the Maxwell system becomes essentially elliptic for the E-field so that solutions can be constructed by the mountain pass theorem. The compactness issues arising in the variational method are overcome by either the cylindrical geometry itself or by extra assumptions on the linear and nonlinear parts of the polarization in case of the slab geometry. Our approach to breather solutions in the presence of time-retardation is systematic in the sense that we look for general conditions on the Fourier-coefficients in time of the retardation kernels. Our main existence result is complemented by concrete examples of coefficient functions and retardation kernels.