The failure problems, associated with capacity fade, poor cycle life, increased internal resistance, abnormal voltage, lithium plating, gas generation, electrolyte leakage, short circuit, battery deformation, thermal runaway, etc., are the fatal issues that restrict the performances and reliabilities of the lithium batteries. The main tasks of failure analysis of lithium batteries are to accurately diagnose, which is vital for revealing the failure modes or failure mechanisms. These information has profound significance for improving the performances and technology of lithium batteries. In order to have a comprehensive understanding of the recent progress on failure analysis research of lithium batteries, the failure analyses from the respect of definition, phenomenon, reason, analysis content, process, difficulty, etc. are briefly reviewed. We hope this review will helpful to the researchers engaged in the field of failure analysis as well as battery field.