Abstract: Electroluminescent polymer is a kind of organic light-emitting material which has broad application prospects in flat-panel displays and solid-state lighting sources due to their outstanding advantages such as solution processability, large-scale manufacturing; and the applic ability to produce flexible devices on plastic substrates. Over the past decades, tremendous progresses have been made in the field of electroluminescent polymers with reagard to synthetic methods, material systems, working mechanisms and device performances. Among the various kinds of electroluminescent polymers, polystyrene-based luminescent materials have shown great potential because of their many merits. First, the polymerization of polystyrene is convenient and can be easily realized, and the monomers used for the polymerization of polystyrene are free of halogen atoms. Moreover, no transition metal catalysts are needed during the polymerization, which eliminates catalyst contamination to the device performance. Second, the non-conjugated main chain structure leads to wide band gap and high triplet energy of polystyrene-based materials, which make them be suitable for the candidates of high-energy chromophores (e.g., blue ones). Third, it’s convenient to introduce different functional units (emissive species, electron or hole transporting units, etc.) to the side chain of polystyrene, which would largely improve the device performance. Thanks to these traits, polystyrene-based materials have attracted much attention during these years. In this paper, the recent research progresses on molecular design and electroluminescent properties of polystyrene-based light emitting materials are reviewed, including fluorescent polystyrenes, phosphorescent polystyrenes and thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) polystyrenes. The opportunities and challenges for the future development of polystyrene-based electroluminescent materials are also discussed.