Due to its high power, high brightness, small size, energy saving and environment friendliness, solid-state lighting has been becoming the most promising lighting technology in the 21st century. As the key material of solid-state lighting, the luminescent properties of phosphors directly determine the crucial parameters such as the color rendering index, luminous efficacy and reliability of solid-state lighting devices. Compared with single crystals, phosphor glasses, phosphor films and quantum-well LEDs, phosphor ceramics have become the most excellent phosphor materials for high-power solid-state lighting due to its excellent thermal and optical properties and easy control of microstructure. In the future, phosphor ceramics will be more widely used and developed in automotive headlights, outdoor lighting, laser TVs, laser cinema projectors and other fields, and have a broad market prospect. In this review, the design principles of high-power solid-state lighting phosphor ceramics are put forward firstly, and then the research progress of oxide phosphor ceramics (mainly refers to Y 3 Al 5 O 12) and nitrogen/oxynitride phosphor ceramics are reviewed mainly. Finally, the development of phosphor ceramics for high-power solid-state lighting is prospected.