The development of microwave absorption materials (MAMs) is a consider-able important topic because our living space is crowed with electromagnetic wave which threat-ens human's health. And MAMs are also used in radar stealth for protecting the weapons from being detected. Many nanomaterials were stud-ied as MAMs, but not all of them have the sat-isfactory performance. Recently, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted tremendous attention owing to their tunable chemical struc-tures, diverse properties, large specific surface area and uniform pore distribution. MOF can transform to porous carbon (PC) which is decorated with metal species at appropriate pyrolysis temperature. However, the loss mechanism of pure MOF-derived PC is often relatively simple. In order to further improve the MA performance, the MOFs coupled with other loss materials are a widely studied method. In this review, we summarize the theories of MA, the progress of different MOF-derived PC-based MAMs, tunable chemical structures incorporated with dielectric loss or magnetic loss materials. The different MA performance and mechanisms are discussed in detail. Finally, the shortcomings, challenges and perspectives of MOF-derived PC-based MAMs are also presented. We hope this review could provide a new insight to design and fabricate MOF-derived PC-based MAMs with better fundamental understanding and practical application.