Background: The review aims to present the major advances of adoptive cell immunotherapy from the emergence of antitumor immunotherapy to future perspectives. Methods: The search sources for the appropriate data included MEDLINE, PubMed, and references from the relevant articles. The keywords for the search process were as follows: adoptive cell immunotherapy (ACT), lymphokine-activated killers (LAK), cytokine-activated killers (CIK), dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccine, chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T-cells), tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), natural killer (NK) cells, CAR-T-cell therapy, and CAR-NK cells. The papers published in English between 1994 and 2022 were considered for the review. Results: The initial experimental research demonstrated the start of a novel and very promising antitumor therapy, though the first clinical trials with the combination of LAK cells and high-dose IL-2 therapy showed less effectiveness than expected. Further development of LAK/IL-2 therapy led to improved results in locoregional treatment, and CIK modifications enhanced effectiveness in adjuvant settings and relapse-free survival of patients with solid tumors. An important milestone in the cell-based therapy was the design of antitumor DC vaccines tailored to induce a specific immune response. Various approaches to improve adoptive cell immunotherapy resulted in designing a number of activation methods for immune effectors, such as TILs, NK cells, and NKT lymphocytes. However, the major breakthrough in cell immunotherapy was achieved with the introduction of genetically modified lymphocytes and implementation of CAR technologies. Although CAR-T-cell therapy has serious unfavorable effects, the experimental and clinical studies of CAR-T and CAR-NK treatment are currently of the highest interest in the field of adoptive cell immunotherapy, and their different modifications seem to be very promising. Conclusion: The perspectives of the adoptive cell immunotherapy are virtually immense. A variety of options for CAR structure modifications, genetic engineering, and selection of effector cells suggest further research potential. Moreover, combining adoptive cell therapy with other medications, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, ensures improved clinical outcomes.