Electromagnetic (EM) absorption is paving the way to overcome the challenges related to conventional shielding strategy against EM pollution through sustainable energy dissipation. As characteristic functional media that can interact with electric or magnetic field branch, EM wave absorption materials (EWAMs) have received extensive attention and realized considerable development in the past two decades, where carbon-based composites are always considered as promising candidates for high-performance EMAWs due to their synergetic loss mechanism as well as diversified composition and microstructure design. Recent progress indicates that there is more and more interest in the fabrication of carbon-based composites with unique core–shell configuration. On one hand, core–shell configuration usually ensures good chemical homogeneity of final products and provides some positive protections for the components with susceptibility to corrosion, on the other hand, it creates enough heterogeneous interfaces between different EM components, which may bring enhanced polarization effect and intensify the consumption of EM energy. In this review, we firstly introduce EM wave absorption theory, and then highlight the advances of core–shell engineering in carbon-based composites in terms of built-in carbon cores and built-out carbon shells. Moreover, we also show some special core–shell carbon-based composites, including carbon/carbon composites, assembled composites, and decorated composites. After analyzing EM absorption performance of some representative composites, we further propose some challenges and perspectives on the development of core–shell carbon-based composites.