A software defined networking(SDN) system has a logically centralized control plane that maintains a global network view and enables network-wide management, optimization, and innovation. Network-wide management and optimization problems are typicallyvery complex with a huge solution space, large number of variables, and multiple objectives. Heuristic algorithms can solve theseproblems in an acceptable time but are usually limited to some particular problem circumstances. On the other hand, evolutionaryalgorithms(EAs), which are general stochastic algorithms inspired by the natural biological evolution and/or social behavior of species, can theoretically be used to solve any complex optimization problems including those found in SDNs. This paper reviewsfour types of EAs that are widely applied in current SDNs: Genetic Algorithms(GAs), Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO), Ant Colony Optimization(ACO), and Simulated Annealing(SA) by discussing their techniques, summarizing their representative applications, and highlighting their issues and future works. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first that compares the tech-niques and categorizes the applications of these four EAs in SDNs. A software defined networking (SDN) system has a logically centralized control plane that maintains a global network view and enables network-wide management, optimization, and innovation. Network-wide management and optimization problems are typicallyvery complex with a huge solution space, large number of variables, and multiple objectives. On the other hand, evolutionary algorithms (EAs), which are general stochastic algorithms inspired by the natural biological evolution and / or social behavior of species, can theoretically be used to solve any complex optimization problems including those found in SDNs. This paper reviews types of EAs that widely been applied in current SDNs: Genetic Algorithms (GAs), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Simulated Annealing (SA) by discussing their techniques, summarizing their representat To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first that comparable to tech-niques and categorizes the applications of these four EAs in SDNs.