Whole eye transplantation (WET) is a potential definitive treatment for irreversible ocular damage and permanent blindness caused by conditions like trauma or tumors. The success of WET depends not only on the complete anatomical restoration of the transplanted eye but, more critically, on the recovery of functional vision. Key challenges in this field include optimizing surgical strategies to re-establish ocular blood circulation, achieving functional neural integration between the donor optic nerve and the recipient's visual centers, and developing precise and effective immunomodulation strategies to strike a balance transplant tolerance and infection risk. This review provides a systematic review of the research progress and developmental challenges in the field of WET. Early studies primarily utilized poikilothermic animal models, which demonstrated a certain degree of plasticity in the visual pathway following transplantation. However, due to significant anatomical differences compared to humans and the lack of sophisticated vascular and neural anastomosis in experimental designs, their clinical translatability of these studies remained constrained. With the progress in microvascular techniques, preliminary explorations in mammalian models and human eye transplantation have achieved significant breakthroughs in microsurgical vascular anastomosis, enabling the short-term reestablishment of retinal blood perfusion in transplanted eyes. Nonetheless, perisitent obstacles include inadequate optic nerve regeneration and poor long-term functional maintenance. Currently, research bottlenecks mainly focus on three aspects: optimizing surgical techniques for blood circulation reconstruction, precisely regenerating nerve axons, and regulating the immune microenvironment. Establishing standardized non-human primate models that closely mimic humans and conducting systematic experimental studies will furnish crucial evidence and novel insights to overcome existing technical hurdles and propel WET toward clinical application.