Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer. At present, immunotherapy has become the fourth treatment for HCC following surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Many studies have proven that immunotherapy can improve the systemic immunological function to reduce the recurrence and metastasis of HCC and prolong the survival time for HCC patients. Dendritic cells (DC) are the most powerful antigen-presenting cells in vivo and play an important role in anti-tumor immune response. The DC-based immunotherapy including DC anti-tumor vaccine, DC-cytokine induced killer cells immunotherapy and DC immunotherapy combined with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization or photodynamic therapy has become the research focus in immunotherapy of HCC and also shown a promising direction. This review concentrates on the research progress of DC-based immunotherapy for HCC in recent years.