Abstract: The impact action of breaking waves on breakwaters is regarded as the main reason for the sliding and failure of breakwaters. However, this impact action has not been deeply cognized in the field of coastal engineering due to its turbulence feature, and the procedurs of breakwater design for the impact action also require to be improved. Therefore, the researches of breaking wave impact on breakwaters are reviewed. Firstly, the researches in the past 80 years are overviewed and can be divided into three stages, i.e. initial stage, outbreak stage and critical stage, and the features and achievements of each stage are summarized. Secondly, four aspects of the researches on the process of impact action, namely, impact classification, impact pressure peak, pressure oscillation and scale effect are discussed. Finally, the studies on impact wave force from two aspects of the calculation method of impact wave force and the dynamic response of breakwaters against breaking wave impact are reviewed. The results indicate that the existence of air is the main reason for making the impact action analysis difficult, and therefore to quantify the uncertainty of the impact process introduced by air will be an important research direction of this issue. Although the second-generation calculation methods for the impact wave force are all conservative, problems are present still in applicability and result consistency. It is therefore a long-term goal of carrying out impact action studies to establish reasonable and unified methods for impact wave force calculation and develop the methods for checking the breakwater stability under the dynamical conditions.