Curdlan is a microbial extracellular polysaccharide, which has good gel properties, water-holding capacity, thickening capacity and freeze-thaw stability, and is widely used in food industry. Curdlan has been increasingly researched and applied in recent years. In this paper, the sources, chemical structure and functional characteristics of curdlan are reviewed, with emphasis on the latest progress in the application of curdlan in various food processing fields, in order to provide a theoretical reference for further application of curdlan in food processing.