Water pollution has been a serious strain to agriculture production in China for a long time. Sewage irrigation is not only a low cost and low energy-consuming way in dealing with polluted water, but also an effective way for sustainable utilization of water resource. In this paper, the history and current situation of sewage irrigation in the world were reviewed and analyzed, the main achievements in theories and techniques of swage irrigation were summarized, the current and future research emphases were disclosed according to problems of swage irrigation in China. It is hoped to promote the development of swage irrigation in China in a standard, scientific and healthy way.