Abstract: The folded reflectarray antenna (FRA) has good application prospects in the fields of radar and communications as a kind of high-gain antenna. It has been widely concerned due to its advantages as low cost, ease of manufacture and compact size since its concept was proposed. Compared with conventional reflectarray antennas, the folded configuration of FRA allows a great reduction of the aperture blockage and antenna depth. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview of FRA, including the operating principles, its advantages over conventionalreflector antennas, as well as the recent developments. The review introduces the three main components of FRA as its main reflector, feeding source and subreflector, and summarizes the beam scanning technique of FRA at home and abroad.