Being rich in nutrients, dairy products provide a good environment for the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, Cronobacter and other foodborne pathogens, which poses a serious threat to the safety of dairy products. Therefore, rapid and accurate detection of foodborne pathogens in dairy products is essential to the prevention of foodborne pathogens. In recent years, analytical techniques including molecular biology and immunoassays have rapidly developed and attracted much attention due to their advantages of high sensitivity, rapidity and simplicity compared with the traditional food pathogen detection methods, which are cumbersome and time-consuming. In this paper, recent developments and applications of foodborne pathogen detection techniques are reviewed, and future trends were discussed in order to provide a reference for the rapid detection of foodborne pathogens in dairy products.