Due to the importance of material's yield behavior in sheet metal forming, the anisotropic yield criterions have been studied extensively. In this paper, a comprehensive review on the development of the anisotropic yield criterions is presented, the three types of yield criterions- Hill series, Hosford series and Drucker series, are generalized separately. The applicability and limitation for each criterion are highlighted, and some different methods of experimental validation are summarized, finally some difficult issues on the application of anisotropic yield criterions during the numerical simulation of sheet metal forming and future research direction are pointed out.