Long afterglow luminescent materials have an intrinsic characteristic of emitting light continuously after being irradiated by excitation sources, which are widely used in the fields of emergency indicator, optical information storage, information encryption and bio-imaging, etc.. Although long afterglow phosphor powders are extensively investigated, their unstable physical and chemical properties and self-absorption induced low afterglow brightness strictly limit their long-term developments. These bottlenecks can be overcome via applying long afterglow glasses, but the limited ion doping concentration in glass matrix could not conducive to the improvement of their afterglow brightness and afterglow duration. Contrarily, long afterglow ceramics of dense structure integrate the merits of both phosphor powders and glasses, and develop rapidly in recent years. Among them, long afterglow transparent ceramics are easy to achieve a desired luminescence uniformity, a high luminescence brightness and a long afterglow duration since their afterglow brightness and afterglow duration can increase with increasing the ceramic thickness (i.e., volume effect), providing a considerable application prospect in the future. Therefore, it is of great significance to conduct systematic investigations towards the optimization of the optical and afterglow properties of long afterglow ceramics and long afterglow transparent ceramics as well as the development of their novel processing techniques.Long afterglow ceramics mainly include aluminate, garnet, sesquioxide and zinc gallate ceramics. Long afterglow aluminate ceramics are easy to achieve a long afterglow duration and a high afterglow brightness, and solid phase reaction method is a mainstream preparation technique of aluminate long afterglow ceramics. The impact of ion doping on the optical and afterglow properties is investigated. With the development of technology, new preparation techniques such as laser sintering and melt-quenching methods are also used to prepare aluminate long afterglow ceramics. Long afterglow garnet ceramics are widely concerned because of their advantages such as abundant doping ions and easy to achieve high concentration doping. Methods of vacuum sintering and ion sensitization are applied to regulate the trap concentration and trap depth of garnet ceramics, and pressure assisted sintering becomes a novel research focus to promote their densification behaviors. The cationic sites of long afterglow sesquioxide ceramics can accommodate a variety of red emitting rare-earth ions such as Eu3+ and Pr3+ ions, thus facilitating their red afterglow luminescence. Despite ion doping and charge compensation methods are utilized to enhance the red afterglow properties of sesquioxide ceramics, their afterglow luminescence performances are still needed to be improved. Long afterglow zinc gallate ceramics are characterized by flexible ion doping and easy formation of reverse defects, and the current research mainly focuses on the white afterglow performances after being irradiated by X-ray irradiations. Other long afterglow ceramics like stannate ceramics, germanate ceramics, phosphate ceramics and nitride ceramics are also reported recently.Long afterglow transparent ceramics are developed rapidly in recent years, and it is demonstrated that the afterglow property of transparent ceramics is superior to that the conventional long afterglow ceramics. The widely investigated long afterglow transparent ceramics include garnet ceramics, gallate strontium aluminate ceramics and zinc silicate ceramics. However, the preparation condition for long afterglow transparent ceramics is severe. Investigations toward long afterglow transparent ceramics are mainly the optimization of the optical qualities and defect states, and sintering techniques include vacuum sintering and hot isostatic pressing sintering are extensively applied to promote their sintering densification behaviors. Recently, novel preparation techniques for long afterglow transparent ceramics such as spark plasma sintering method and melt-quenching method are reported, and the obtained ceramics exhibit the superior optical and afterglow properties. Summary and prospects Although long afterglow ceramics and long afterglow transparent ceramics have achieved vigorous development, some problems (i.e., inadequate recognition of afterglow mechanism, unsatisfactory optical transmittance of long afterglow transparent ceramics, unsatisfactory afterglow performance of blue light excited long afterglow ceramics and lacking of investigations on red afterglow ceramics) are still needed to solve in order to accelerate their future developments. Therefore, developing advanced powder synthesis methods and novel ceramic fabrication techniques such as melt-queching method are crucial to improve the optical quality of long afterglow ceramics, and exploring large sized or complex shaped long afterglow ceramics is also necessary to promote their industrialization. In improving the afterglow performances of long afterglow ceramics, developing ceramic matrices with abundant lattice defects as well as the active or sensitize ions with long fluorescence lifetimes is significant in addition to further exploring the afterglow mechanisms for long afterglow ceramic systems. Also, utilizing the synergistic effect between ceramic matrix and doping ions, by means of regulating the energy difference between doping ions and conduction bands to manipulate trap depth of ceramics is another meaningful approach to optimize afterglow performances of ceramics. Finally, promoting the real applications of long afterglow ceramics is the ultimate destination of the research. The present mainstream application of long afterglow ceramics focuses on their visible light illuminations acting as indicators or decorations. In this regard, it is urgent to explore the near-infrared emitting long afterglow ceramics to accelerate their infrared imaging applications, which is conducive to the development of medical treatment and industrial production. Meanwhile, the development and application of mechano-luminescent long afterglow ceramics, deep trap long afterglow ceramics and photochromic long afterglow ceramics are important research aspects of long afterglow ceramic materials. In general, realizing the intrinsic optimizations of both optical qualities and afterglow performances of long afterglow ceramics is a key to accelerating their real applications, and the corresponding investigations are still needed to carry out in the future.