The incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) has been increasing in last twenty years. However, the etiology of NHL is not unclear. Gene polymorphisms were demonstrated to play important roles in human susceptibility to diseases such as cancers. This paper reviews epidemiology studies of associations between polymorphisms in genes involved in immunity regulation, chemical and folate metabolism, DNA repair, cell cycle and oncogenes and NHL. Although some positive associations between gene polymorphisms and NHL incidence risk were observed, more epidemiology studies are necessary. In future studies, haplotype tagging SNPs and gene-environmenal interactions should be identified.