Facing the increasingly high requirements for the refinement degree of parts in all walks of life, the traditional forging, casting and other forming technologies can no longer meet the needs of life and production. As an emerging additive manufacturing technology, cold spray has attracted widespread attentions because of its unique characteristics of no phase change, no oxidation and high deposition efficiency in the material preparation process. In this paper, the basic principle of cold spray technology and its advantages in materials manufacturing are described. Then the research progress of cold spray on the preparation of metals, metal matrix composites and laminated composites at home and abroad is reviewed. In the end, the current problems and barriers that need to be broken through faced by cold spray technology are summarized, and in view of the existing problems, new research objectives and development directions are proposed.