Character education takes an important part in preparing for Indonesia's golden generation. To realize a good character education, school needs an effective leader who is able to prepare a golden generation to help Indonesia to be a better nation and be ready to compete in global competition. The importance of the principal's leadership to design the character golden generation of Indonesia is very interesting to study, and this article aims to review how the principal's leadership in shaping the character of Indonesia's golden generation. There are a number of articles found about the principal's leadership review and their effect on the character of Indonesia's golden generation that was made not only by researchers in Indonesia but also written by foreign researchers. The purpose of this literature review is to find out the role of the principal's leadership in shaping the character of the golden generation of Indonesia. Based on the results of literature reviews from various countries in the world, we found the scope of the article was still limited, so, we wanted to know more deeply and was interested in following up on the discussion about the role of the principal's leadership in shaping the character of Indonesia's golden generation towards demographic bonus 2045.

The search ranges from 2015 – 2020. Most of the research results indicate that the principal transformational leadership plays an important role in shaping the quality of education in implementing independent learning education policies. First, the articles reviewed were in English, so other studies were not reviewed due to limitations in the context of several countries. Second, dissertations and theses were not discussed in this article because they could cause publication bias in the results. Third, the scope of the articles reviewed is still limited. Implementation of principal transformational leadership free learning policy in improving the quality of education can be used for various organizations in various countries.