A review of recent research progresses in the determination of trace amount of manganese with catalytic-kinetic spectrophotometric method is presented and discussed in the present paper. Firstly, by comparison it is showed that catalytic-kinetic spectrophotometry has more advantages than atomic absorption spectrophotometry and extraction-spectrophotometry for the determination of trace amounts of manganese. The review and discussion of the recent research developments in the catalytic discoloring spectrophotometry and catalytic coloring spectrophotometry for the determination of trace amounts of manganese are given respectively. Finally the development trends and application perspectives for the catalytic-kinetic spectrophotometry in the future are discussed and probed. Twenty five references are cited.