Microbial keratitis is a common ocular disease worldwide and is an important cause of vision loss and blindness. A comprehensive understanding of the pathogenesis of microbial keratitis is required for the establishment of animal models of related diseases. These models play an important role in studying the immune response and infection mechanism of host infections and drug development, and provide a scientific evidence for the selection of clinical treatment strategies and pursuing basic research。 Here we summarize the animal models and the pathogenic mechanism of infectious keratitis to provide comprehensive understanding of the current research on these models.