Palliative care is a holistic approach concerned with the physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of the patients and their families. Healthcare providers should receive special training in order to be able to provide optimal palliative care. Given the increasing prevalence of incurable diseases requiring palliative care across the world, training nurses to provide palliative care to patients is a global priority. Nurses constitute one of the main pillars of a palliative care team. Given its relatively long history of training nurses at different levels, palliative care training is still at its infancy in Iran. The present study was conducted to assess the status of nursing education in palliative care in Iran and attempts to also describe the challenges and barriers against teaching palliative care and the activities and achievements of recent years in this area. Despite the slow progress of palliative care in nursing, the recent measures taken provide a promising outlook for nursing education in palliative care in Iran.