Abstract: Ventilated cavitation is an important kind of complex multiscale and multiphase flow, especially ventilated partial cavitation with the formation, development, shedding and interaction of cavitation vortices at different scales, which causes dramatic and complex changes in hydrodynamics and plays an important role in the formation, development and stability of supercavitation. In this paper, the research progressed of ventilated cavitating flow characteristics are reviewed from the viewpoints of experimental and numerical investigations, respectively. And the exiting problems in the ventilated cavitation research are also discussed. For the experimental study, the experimental platform, measurement technology of the flow pattern, internal flow structure and hydrodynamics for ventilated cavitating flows. For the numerical investigations, some of the most popular multiphase models and turbulence models are introduced by categorization. And then, we review the ventilated cavitating flow pattern, the transition mechanism of different flow patterns and the physical mechanism on the shedding of unsteady ventilated cavitation. Finally, the direction and trends of ventilated cavitating flow researches in the future are prospected.