Recently, the traditional static infrared emissivity engineering can no longer meet the high requirements of advanced applications such as dynamic infrared camouflage in changing environments, temperature adaptive radiative cooling, and spacecraft intelligent thermal control, thus dynamic emissivity modulation has attracted researchers’ attention. Infrared emissivity dynamic modulation materials refer to materials whose infrared emissivity can be reversibly modulated under external stimulations, such as thermal, electricity and optical, etc. In this review, we systematically summarized the progress, basic modulation principles, materials and corresponding applications of several categories of materials sorted by stimulus, including thermal modulation materials, electrical modulation materials, optical modulation materials, strain modulation materials and wetting modulation materials. Specifically, this paper mainly focused on the first two categories and introduced the following most commonly used materials in detail:vanadium dioxide (VO2), GeSeTe (GST), tungsten trioxide (WO3), lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12, LTO), polyaniline, polythiophene, and graphene, etc. Last, the performance mainly including the modulation ability, modulation spectra range, response time, stability, complexity of structure and cost, etc. as well as existing obstacles of each type of material has been analyzed and compared. We hope this review could provide reference for the research on emissivity dynamic modulation materials and inspire more creative material design and applications in various areas. The research on the infrared emissivity dynamic modulation intelligent coatings will greatly broaden its practical applications in infrared stealth/camouflage, radiative cooling, intelligent smart control, infrared imaging and display areas, despite it is still in the early developing stage and faces many opportunities and challenges. In the future, with more explore on new materials and test methods, as well as interaction with other advanced technologies such as electronics, circuit integration, artificial intelligence, etc. the infrared emissivity dynamic modulation coatings will develop towards a more intelligent direction:flexibility, large area, multispectral modulation, and detection-analyze-modulate system construction.