Abstract: Diabetes is a metabolic disease with an extremely high incidence in China. In parallel with an increased incidence yearly, the population of diabetes is showing a trend towards younger age. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out research on diabetes in order to develop strategy for prevention. In recent years, metabolomics has made significant progress in the study of biomarkers, pathogenesis, early diagnosis and prognosis, and evalua tion of drug efficacy in diabetes. However, limited by metabolomics technology and the complexity of diabetes research, metabolomics in the diabetes research remains challenging. We summarize the progress and prospect the future development of metabolomics in the diabetes research.