Heart failure (HF) is a kind of complex clinical syndrome and a severe threat to human life and health.Small animal models cannot meet the research needs for pathogenesis and therapeutic intervention of HF because of the inevitable differences in physiopathology and anatomical structures.Therefore，large animal models of HF have become imperative because they are closer to human in structure and function，physiopathology and anatomy.Upon review of literature in recent years，this paper summarizes the establishment methods and application evaluation of different kinds of large animal models of HF，such as volume overload，pressure overload，drug-induced，ventricular rapid pacing，myocardial infarction and molecular genetics，in order to promote pertinency of HF research.