Metal phthalocyanine is a class of synthetic planar macrocyclic complex with isoindoles as component unit. They are not only used as high-quality pigments or dyes, but also as novel materials in the fields of solar cells, liquid crystal materials, information storage, environmental catalysis and so on. For traditional preparation of metal phthalocyanine, the reflux reactions with high boiling point solvent were often required and the concentrated sulfuric acid was also used to purify the products. Therefore, the obvious disadvantages of these traditional methods are low efficiency and environmentally unfriendly for their dependence on the high toxicity solvents. From the perspective of the development of green chemistry and preparation requirements of novel metal phthalocyanine materials, the future development trend of metal phthalocyanine synthesis is the one via green processes with the characteristics of environmentally friendly, low cost and facile purification. The research progress of metal phthalocyanine crystals synthesized by one-step solvothermal method were reviewed, and their experimental conditions, and product structures were summarized in detail. Besides, the advantages of this method were evaluated. The future development of metal phthalocyanine crystals synthesized by solvothermal method was predicted.