Traveling wave fault location has the characteristics of high precision and fast speed position, which is mainly used in high voltage transmission line fault location. Firstly, this paper discusses the development and general situation of the research in this field. According to the different theories of the fault location, it can be generally divided into two parts, one is the single-terminal method or the multi-terminal method in a single transmission line, and the other is the wide-area fault location based on the network. Secondly, it focuses on the problems of reflection wave identification of the single-ended method, the clock synchronization technology based on GPS and IEEE1588 of the double-terminal method, and the wide-area fault location based on IEC61850. Then the latest research progress on the key issues of traveling wave acquisition, wave head detection, influence of wave velocity on the range, and the velocity elimination of traveling wave fault location algorithm are reviewed. Moreover, the future key issues to be solved urgently are also pointed out. It is shown that the traveling wave fault location has good application prospect in power system and will be the important development direction in the field of transmission line fault location.