As a new member of the metamaterial family, thermal metamaterial has gained much attention from the very beginning, and has been intensively investigated in recent years. Based on the key technology of thermal metamaterials, the basic theory of coordinate transformation as well as the novel properties of thermal metamaterials is introduced, and the recent progresses of thermal metamaterials, such as thermal cloaking/stealth, thermal protection, thermal management, thermal Information and other aspects of applications have also been reviewed in this paper. Based on the research status and development trend of thermal metamaterials, we systematically classify and sort out the contents and characteristics of relevant research in recent years, and make some prospects about the future applications of thermal metamaterials in the fields of cloaking, thermal management, information and so on.