A cooperative communication network consisting of a source, a destination, and one or multiple relays serves as a primary building block useful to implement practical wireless systems. On the other hand, limited battery life of mobile terminals adversely affects the performance of wireless communication systems. As a contemporary development, significant advances made in wireless power transfer (WPT) and energy harvesting techniques offer effective solutions to replenish energy and prolong the network operation. In this context, envisioning the combination of WPT and relay nodes seems to open up the promising prospect of building a network with larger throughput, wider coverage, and quasiperpetual operation. In this article, we present an overview of the contemporary results on system analysis, optimization, and hardware design aspects of wireless‐powered cooperative relay networks. Further, we highlight key research challenges that requires the attention of research community and system designers so that implementation of such networks becomes a reality in the near future.