Abstract: Sugarcane is the most vital sugar crop in China, with excellent nutritional, medicinal and economic value. Sugarcane is rich in phenolic compounds, which have a variety of physiological functions, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and hypoglycemic. This paper focuses on the extraction of sugarcane polyphenols and the application of novel extraction techniques to plant polyphenols. In addition, principles and properties of purification methods for sugarcane polyphenols are presented, and important biological activities including antioxidant, hypoglycaemic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-bacterial properties are described. The extraction and purification of sugarcane polyphenols is found to be relatively routine. Although sugarcane polyphenols have a variety of biological activities, the mechanisms of their activity have not been fully elucidated. There is a need to focus on new extraction and purification techniques for sugarcane polyphenols and mechanisms of their activity to facilitate the development and utilization of sugarcane polyphenols and deep processing of sugarcane byproducts.