Abstract: Sandbars are the main morphological features of many wave-dominated sandy coasts and their dynamic behavior can serve as an important indicator for assessing beach stability. This paper presents a review of the progress and problems of the research on the cross-shore migration of nearshore sandbars including the bar-shape parameters, the formation theories, migration mechanisms and the methods of numerical simulation. Although considerable research on sandbar migration has been carried out by researchers both in China and abroad, there are still many problems that remain to be solved due to the complexity of dynamic processes involved, especially the coupling process between sediment transport and sandbar migration. The review highlights areas for further studies, which include differences in spatial characteristics of sandbar migration, the threshold of sandbar migration, the influence of breaking waves on near-bottom sediment transport, sandbar migration, the improvements of numerical models and the interaction mechanism between sediment transport and sandbar migration.