Abstract: Thermal barrier coating is one of the effective ways to improve the working temperature of aero-engine turbine blades. However, due to thermal erosion, high-temperature corrosion and other factors, failure and falls off often occur during its service, thus affecting the working efficiency of aero-engine. In this paper, the failure mechanisms of thermal barrier coating are firstly analyzed, and the final state of thermal barrier coating under different failure mechanisms are clarified; then the current cleaning methods of thermal barrier coating are summarized; finally, the application prospect and future development trend of laser cleaning in thermal barrier coating are emphatically discussed, which provides a new technical scheme for the removal of thermal barrier coating.