Abstract: China ranks first in the world in both shipbuilding completion volume and hand-held order backlog, emerging as a veritable major and powerful shipbuilding country. Shipbuilding steel serves as the main structural material for ships and offshore engineering platforms, and its performance and technical level exert a decisive influence on the overall service performance of ships. This paper conducts a systematic literature investigation on ultra-high strength shipbuilding steels at home and abroad, and analyzes the future development trends of this field on this basis. The research results show that with the continuous improvement of China's shipbuilding steel technical system, domestically produced shipbuilding steels with standard strength and high strength have achieved full independence and can meet the manufacturing demands of conventional domestic ships. However, compared with the top technologies of maritime powers including Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, the research, development and manufacturing capabilities of China's ultra-high strength shipbuilding steels are still insufficient. Obvious gaps exist in strength grades, thickness specifications and other aspects, which cannot match the rapid development demands of China's marine economy. Four types of ultra-high strength shipbuilding steels, namely GPa-grade ultra-high yield strength steel, low-carbon medium-manganese steel, low yield ratio steel and corrosion-resistant steel, are the core development directions of the industry in the future. Nano-precipitate strengthening acts as the core key technology to break the performance bottleneck of ultra-high strength steels. Niobium, vanadium and titanium carbonitrides as well as copper-rich nanoclusters and precipitates are widely applied in the research, development and industrial production of ultra-high strength hull steels, forming a relatively mature technical system. Latest studies confirm that NiAl intermetallic compounds with a B2 structure possess superior strengthening efficiency and great application potential. Nevertheless, their precipitation behavior and strengthening and toughening mechanisms in the multi-component alloy system of shipbuilding steels remain unclear and need further in-depth exploration. Therefore, intensive research and development of second-phase precipitate strengthening technology to promote the quality improvement and upgrading of ultra-high strength shipbuilding steels has important practical and strategic significance for making up for the shortcomings of China's shipbuilding materials, improving the international competitiveness of the shipbuilding industry, and consolidating the development foundation of the marine economy.