The research situation and development trend of status monitoring and fault diagnosis of printing press in both domestic and foreign country was analyzed. It was concluded that the research of press monitoring is focused on several aspects, such as vibration signal testing, application of expert experience and knowledge, and introduction of pattern recognition algorithms. Fault diagnosis of printing press based on printing pattern was discussed. As the development of printing machine, traditional fault diagnosis method has been largely restricted in a press system. We considered that future research will be focused on the following: taking multi-information monitoring in printing machine, establishing fault decision-making system with the fusion of empirical knowledge and advanced recognition algorithm,and extracting parameters from the printed information.