Cyanobacterial blooms are increasingly becoming major threats to global inland aquatic ecosystems. Phycocyanin (PC), a pigment unique to cyanobacteria, can provide important reference for the study of cyanobacterial blooms warning. New satellite technology and cloud computing platforms have greatly improved research on PC, with the average number of studies examining it having increased from 5 per year before 2018 to 17 per year thereafter. Many empirical, semi-empirical, semi-analytical, quasi-analytical algorithm (QAA) and machine learning (ML) algorithms have been developed based on unique absorption characteristics of PC at approximately 620 nm. However, most models have been developed for individual lakes or clusters of them in specific regions, and their applicability at greater spatial scales requires evaluation. A review of optical mechanisms, principles and advantages and disadvantages of different model types, performance advantages and disadvantages of mainstream sensors in PC remote sensing inversion, and an evaluation of global lacustrine PC datasets is needed. We examine 230 articles from the Web of Science citation database between 1900 and 2024, summarize 57 of them that deal with construction of PC inversion models, and compile a list of 6526 PC sampling sites worldwide. This review proposed the key to achieving global lacustrine PC remote sensing inversion and spatiotemporal evolution analysis is to fully use existing multi-source remote sensing big data platforms, and a deep combination of ML and optical mechanisms, to classify the object lakes in advance based on lake optical characteristics, eutrophication level, water depth, climate type, altitude, population density within the watershed. Additionally, integrating data from multi-source satellite sensors, ground-based observations, and unmanned aerial vehicles, will enable future development of global lacustrine PC remote estimation, and contribute to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals inland water goals.