Abstract This review concentrated on proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) water management, which introduces the latest research contents and progresses on membrane electrode assembly (MEA) components, and summarizes the influencing factors about the properties of them. The PEMFC's core component is MEA which consists of proton exchange membrane, catalyst layer, microporous layer and carbon fiber paper. The properties of each component have significant impacts on the fuel cell (FC) performance, and there will be strong interactions between some properties. Therefore, the FC performance is determined by the properties of each component and their interactions. It is the basis for the design of the high-performance FCs to clarify the influence mechanism of various properties and their interactions on the FC performance, but there is currently no summary on this aspect. Therefore, the conclusions about the same component or property drawn from all literatures are sorted and combined, so that we can intuitively know which literatures have studied and reached the conclusions, and comprehensively realize the influence mechanism of a certain property. Based on the development and achievement of each component in some aspects, this article makes some predictions and discussions on the future research direction and development prospects of each component.