The study carries out a systematic literature review to collect evidence and drew a holistic picture of the effectiveness of local-based content in the EFL materials on learners' reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills. The systematic review covered several databases including EBSCO and Google Scholar as well as leading publishers such as Emerald. The study adopts systematic search, analysis, and synthesis of published studies and research results relevant to the local-based content functioning in EFL materials were extracted. Specifically, the review extracted 49 peer-reviewed articles published between 2012 and 2020. The careful analysis of these articles revealed a medium to large effect of local-based content on reading and listening skills. However, there is unclear evidence of its effect on writing and speaking skills.