Abiotic stresses such as cold, drought and high salinity are common adverse environmental conditions that seriously influence plant growth and crop productivity worldwide. Some transcription factors (TFs) have been isolated and verified recently to play roles under abiotic stresses. Among them, the TF of DREB (Dehydration responsive element binding) can therefore regulate the expression of many stress-inducible genes in plants and play a critical role in improving abiotic stress tolerance of plants by interacting with specific cis-acting element named DRE/CRT, which is present in the promoter region of various abiotic stress-related genes. In this review, we summarized the current knowledge of DREBs in the structural and functional characters with emphasis on the regulation and mechanisms of DREBs on plant development, as well as new research approaches and complexity of the signal transduction pathway of DREBs. The practical and application value of DREBs in crop improvement engineering was also discussed.