Chemotherapy is the main method used for cancer treatment. However, most chemotherapeutic drugs show low selectivity towards tumor cells. When killing tumor cells, chemotherapeutic drugs can also damage normal tissue cells and induce a series of side effects and toxic reactions, such as gastrointestinal reactions, calvities and so on. An effective way to reduce the adverse drug reactions is to construct targeted delivery systems based on the microenvironment properties of tumor tissue. Porous carbon nanomaterials (PCN), with excellent properties such as good structural stability, pores, and easily modified surface, are promising candidate to be used for such strategy. In this paper, the construction and application of the PCN-based targeted antitumor drugs delivery system were reviewed; the structural properties, the design philosophy of PCN suitable for drug loading were summarized; the effective strategies to improve drug loading on PCN for combined drug delivery were discussed both theoretically and experimentally. The mechanism and applications of PCN for tumor microenvironment based targeted delivery system were analyzed from the perspectives of endogenous sensitive stimulations (such as acidity, redox potential and specific enzyme), exogenous sensitive stimulations (such as light and magnetic) and multiple sensitive stimulations (such as double sensitive stimulations, including acidity/redox potential, acidity/magnetic and magnetic/light, and three sensitive stimulation, including acidity/redox potential/light). The biocompatibility and biodegradability of PCN used as anti-tumor drug delivery system was discussed, and the possible solutions were analyzed. The prospects of the application of PCN to be used in tumor drugs were discussed at the end of this review. This review provides theoretical basis and examples towards design and synthesis of porous carbon (PC) materials based anti-tumor drug delivery system, which may help the research and development of targeted and controllable tumor treatment.