<p>With the rapid development of aerospace, microelectronics, and medical fields, the constituent components are gradually moving towards miniaturization and refinement, which puts forward higher requirements for the cutting quality and machining accuracy of the parts. Water jet-guided laser cutting is a new technology that utilizes a water jet beam to guide the laser to the processing plane; due to its advantages of no thermal influence, high processing precision, and no pollution, it has gained wide application in various fields. This paper firstly describes the working principle of water jet-guided laser and material removal mechanism, and summarizes the advantages over traditional laser cutting, then introduces the typical application of this technology in the field of metals, brittle crystals, and composite materials, and finally analyzes the technical difficulties of water jet-guided laser cutting and looks forward to the trend of future development of this technology.</p>