In recent years, the wettability of colloidal PCs has attracted much interest from researchers due to potential applications in printing, sensor, microfluidics and so on. In this paper, we present two kinds of research work related to PCs' wettability. On the one hand, the functional colloidal PCs have been fabricated from the modification of its wettability. Where, the wettability of PCs can be modified from superhydrophilic, superhydrophobic, amphiphilic, gradient wettability, controllable wettability and patterned wettability. Wettability is an important property of solid surface and can be generally controlled mainly by its surface chemical composition and surface topographic structure. Surface chemical composition determines surface free energy (i.e., hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity), while the surface topographic structure can amplify hydrophilicity or hydrophobicity, based on the Wenzel and modified Cassie equation. Thus, PCs with specific wettability have been fabricated based on their intrinsic, well-ordered surface topographic structure, and chemical composition. The superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic PCs have been achieved based on the amplification effect of the surface well-ordered topographic structure. The gradient PCs have been fabricated by changing the topographic structure. The PCs with controllable wettability can be obtained when introducing a responsive group onto PCs' surface. The underwater oil-adhesion properties of PCs have been controlled by varying the latex from spherical or cauliflower-like to single cavity. On the other hand, functional PCs are fabricated from the substrate with specific wettability. Typically, high-quality and crack free PCs are achieved from superhydrophobic substrate, pattern PCs from the hydrophilic-hydrophobic substrate, PC dome with excellent wide-angle property is fabricated from hydrophobic substrate. Otherwise, gas-liquid or liquid-liquid interface has also been included as a special substrate for the fabrication of functional PCs, such as flower-shape or cake-shaped Janus PCs. Colloidal photonic crystals (PCs), the periodic arrangement of monodispersed latex spheres, have attracted much interest from researchers due to their unique light manipulation properties. The combination of the special wettability and light manipulation properties of PCs will bring many novel properties and promising applications. Finally, the outlook and challenges for colloidal photonic crystals with special wettability are discussed. The work is of importance for the creation of novel functional materials.