The continuous development of military radar makes weapons and equipment face severe challeges. How to improve the stealth performance of weapons has become the research focus of scholars at home and abroad. Absorbing materials that can absorb and convert incident radar waves into heat energy are widely used in radar stealth technology. Traditional microwave absorbing coating materials, such as ferrite and carbon materials, have been widely used,but they cannot achieve the properties of “thin, light, wide and strong” in practical applications. Metamaterials, as a kind of artificial materials with extraordinary physical properties that conventional materials do not have, bring infinite possibilities for the design of radar absorbing materials. The fusion of metamaterial absorbers and traditional material absorbers is expected to achieve better absorber used in harsh war environments. In this paper, the research status of microwave absorbing materials is summarized for three aspects: traditional material absorbers, metamaterial absorbers, and the fusion of traditional material absorbers and metamaterial absorbers. Finally, the future development of microwave absorbing materials is prospected.