Avian influenza virus H5 subtype（AIV-H5）is widely spreading in the world，posing a huge threat to poultry industry and public health. The industry was seriously damaged by several global outbreaks in domestic poultry and wild birds caused by AIV-H5 represented by H5N1，H5N6 and H5N8 virus. In addition，AIV-H5 was prone to mutation and recombination，which not only increased the difficulty of disease prevention and control，but also easily lead to incidents of transmission across species barriers to human，endangering public health and safety and other issues；research progress on different types of AIV vaccines such as inactivated vaccines was systematically described，emphasizing that current inactivated vaccines were predominant，but new vaccines such as subunit vaccines，DNA vaccines and peptide vaccines were emerging. A theoretical support was provided by the paper for early warning of avian influenza outbreaks，the promotion of “ One Health”concept and for vaccine researches.