Special ceramics are widely used in aerospace, electronics, information, new energy, machinery, chemical industry, and other emerging industries. Their high temperature preparation process is still dominated by traditional gas kilns and electric heating furnaces with high carbon emissions and high energy consumption. The energy conservation-emission reduction situation is grim at present. Therefore, China is facing great pressure to achieve ‘double carbon’ goal, badly needing research and promotion of clean and efficient heating technology. Microwave heating uses the dielectric loss of the material itself to absorb microwave and convert electromagnetic energy into heat energy at molecular level. In this way, heat is generated simultaneously both inside and outside the whole material, leading the temperature gradient very low in the whole material. In addition to the volumetric heating, selective heating, power redistribution, thermal upheaval, and microwave plasma effect are important characteristics of microwave sintering. Microwave heating has the advantages of energy conservation, environmental protection, improved product performance and reduced combustion carbon emissions. There are many reports on microwave synthesis of various oxides, carbides, nitrides ceramic powders, and microwave sintering ceramic composites domestic and abroad. In this paper, the basic theories of microwave sintering and microwave mixed sintering are reviewed firstly, and then the latest research progress on preparation of ceramic powders by microwave heating and ceramic materials preparation by microwave sintering is introduced. Finally, microwave heating used in sintering of ceramic engineering products is introduced, which shows the superiority of microwave sintering. The key problems and the future development direction of special ceramics prepared by microwave sintering are also proposed.