Cancer, as one of the diseases with high mortality rates in the world, has received enormous attention from people. Conventional therapeutic approaches cannot satisfy the need for unacceptable side effects, tumor recurrence, and poor prognosis. Photoimmunotherapy (PIT) mediated by antibody-photosensitizer conjugates, as a new targeting therapy method, could minimize the side effects. Even no side effects were observed when the photosensitizer was near-infrared, water-soluble, silicon phthalocyanine derivative, IRdye700DX, termed as near-infrared photoimmunotherapy (NIR-PIT). The mechanism was concluded that under the NIR irradiation, the rupture of the cell membrane induced the rapid and highly selective immunogenic cell death (ICD), which initiated a host anticancer immune response. PIT could virtually target any specific antigens for tumors and realized effective tumor depression in various tumor models in vivo. Many attempts were made to improve the therapeutic efficacy and reduce tumor recurrence, such as the combination therapy with chemotherapy or immunogenic protein. In 2017, the first 1/2 clinical trial in human phase was successfully conducted utilizing cetuximab (Cet)-IR700 as the agent of NIR-PIT, and the target audience was patients with recurrent head and neck cancer who were unable to undergo surgical treatment. Hence, PIT, as a potential candidate, is expected to serve as a new targeting approach for clinical cancer therapy.