Oil and organic solvent contamination, derived from oil spills and organic solvent leakage, has been recognized as one of the major environmental issues imposing a serious threat to both human and ecosystem health. Among the various presented technologies applied for oil/water separation, oil absorption process has been explored widely and offers satisfactory results especially with surface modified oil-absorbing material and/or hybrid absorbents. In this review, we summarize the recent research activities involved in the designing strategies of oil-absorbing absorbents and their application in oil absorption. Then, an extensive list of various oil-absorbing materials from literature, including polymer materials, porous inorganic materials and biomass materials, has been compiled and the oil adsorption capacities toward various types of oils and organic solvents as available in the literature are presented along with highlighting and discussing the various factors involved in the designing of oil-absorbing absorbents tested so far for oil/water separation, finally, some future trends and perspectives in oil-absorbing material are outlined. (C) 2018 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.