With the rapid advancement of science and technology, modern medicine no longer focuses on surgical procedures, but also prioritizes recovery and comfortable medical care. Patients often experience severe pain within 24 hours after surgery. Excessive stress seriously affects the quality of postoperative recovery. It is of great importance to improve perioperative analgesia of patients. The application of novel analgesic agents and methods has promoted the development of postoperative pain management, but the limitation of the duration of action of local anesthetics remains a major challenge. Hydrogel sustained-release system loaded with local anesthetics has attracted much attention due to its characteristics of easy synthesis, strong stability and long-term sustained-release. It has been gradually applied in clinic treatment and has a good application prospect. Based on recent studies, this article reviews the types, properties, recent research progress and related mechanisms of loaded local anesthetic hydrogels for postoperative analgesia, in order to provide reference for the development and research of multi-mode analgesia.