With the intensification of the global energy crisis and the deterioration of ecological environment, the exploitation and utilization of sustainable energy have gained more attention. Metal-air battery as a kind of high-performance green energy may become one of the most promising next-generation battery technologies. Compared to conventional storage batteries such as Zn-Mn and lead-acid batteries, metal-air battery has higher theoretical energy density, especially Li-air battery with an extremely high theoretical density 3505 Wh/kg. Such high energy density is due to the fact that oxygen is not stored in the cell. Other advantages include stable potential, low cost and environmental friendship. However, there are many important factors that limit its commercial application. Among them, a critical issue is the sluggish kinetics of cathodic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), so it is necessary to develop ORR catalytic materials for enhancing the kinetics. Recently, there are many researches about ORR catalysts. In addition to a brief introduction of the reaction mechanism of ORR, the paper introduced the current research progress of four groups of cathodic catalysts including noble metal and its alloys, transition-metal oxides/sulfides, functional carbon materials and metal nitrides. However, there are still many problems, such as the lack of fundamental mechanistic study, high cost of Pt-based catalyst, uncertain active site of functional carbon materials and low activity for non-noble metal catalysts. In summary, great efforts should be needed. Based on this, the authors pointed out the development direction for ORR catalysts. The future research direction of cathodic catalysts would include: (1) researching the elusive oxygen reaction mechanism and defining the active sites, (2) studying the effect of physical structure parameters (e.g., structure, morphology, size) on the activity and optimizing synthesis conditions of catalysts to obtain better activity and stability, (3) developing novel efficient and inexpensive catalysts in according to the oxygen reaction mechanism.