As to control systems, transient performance is as important as steady‐state performance. For some special dynamic systems, transient performance is a more prior index in comparison with the steady‐state one. Prescribed performance control (PPC) has been proved to be a powerful tool that guarantees control system outputs/errors with desired transient performance as well as steady‐state performance. The purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive review on the latest developments of PPC theories and applications. The existing performance functions are classified into five different categories, and their features are comprehensively compared, providing a useful guidance for further applications. Then, the latest developments of PPC's applications in all kinds of control systems are recalled. Specially, the faced challenges and theoretical defects of PPC are discussed, which is expected to point out the further research direction for PPC.