This paper is concerned with moving horizon estimation for a class of constrained switching nonlinear systems, where the system mode is regarded as an unknown discrete state to be estimated together with the continuous state. In this work, we establish the observability framework of switching nonlinear systems by proposing a series of concepts about observability and analyzing the properties of such concepts. By fully applying the observability properties, we prove the stability of the proposed moving horizon estimators. Simulation results are reported to verify the derived results. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.