Abstract: In recent years, with the intensification of global climate change, a low-carbon economy has become a development trend. As a key area for carbon emissions, the low-carbon transformation of the ironmaking process in the steel industry is of vital importance. Among the contemporary mainstream ironmaking processes, although blast furnace ironmaking dominates, its carbon emissions are high. The direct reduction process has problems such as resource dependence and high energy consumption. The technical economy of the smelt reduction process has not yet been broken through. Meanwhile, hydrogen metallurgy is the core path to achieve “zero-carbon ironmaking”, which is theoretically capable of reducing CO₂ emissions by approximately 90%. However, it faces challenges such as high hydrogen production costs, insufficient technological maturity and equipment compatibility. Strategies such as the synergy between the low-carbon upgrading of traditional processes and technological innovation, and the transformation of the energy structure and the collaborative emission reduction of industries are proposed. In the future, traditional blast furnace processes will accelerate their low-carbon transformation, and non-blast furnace ironmaking technologies are expected to achieve large-scale breakthroughs. The maturity of the hydrogen energy industry chain affects the speed of transformation, and multi-party collaboration will help the steel industry achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.