Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) provide several advantages, such as small footprint, low power consumption, high efficiency, broad modulation bandwidth, long lifetime, circular beam, wafer-level test, and two-dimensional array arrangement. VCSELs have been widely deployed in fields such as data communication, sensing, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and material processing. These applications require VCSELs that have superior modal properties, high data rate, high energy efficiency, and high temperature stability. Many novel oxide-confined VCSELs based on separated confinement for single-mode operation have been reported. Progress in data rate, power consumption, and temperature stability of VCSELs has been achieved using novel VCSEL structures, improving the active region, reducing the parasitic effect, and reducing the thermal effect. Photonic metastructures with unique optical properties can be used to control the modes and modal fields of VCSELs and integrate VCSELs with in-plane photonic circuits.