Abstract: Classical swine fever （CSF）,caused by classical swine fever virus （CSFV）,one plus strand RNA virus,is a highly contagious porcine disease,and it can cause a severe harm to pigs.Its course is cute,subacute,chronic,atypical or mild.In recent two years,CSF is epidemic in some domestic and international areas.The disease has high incidence and new epidemic characteristics such as subclinical infection and mixed infection,which makes prevention more difficult and leads to some economic losses in many pig farms.This paper briefly reviews the etiological characteristics and pathogenesis of CSFV,diagnosis and status of vaccine prevention and research of CSF in order to provide new ideas and measures for the future prevention and control of CSF.