Glycosylation is the key step of the synthesis of GM3 ,its reaction conditions are very harsh ,the stereoselec‐tivities are usually poor ,and the configuration of anomeric carbon is difficult to control .Whetherαglycosidic bond can be con‐structed efficiently in sialylation reactions is an important criteria used to evaluate the reaction quality .Studies of GM3 and de‐rivatives methods generally relates to following areas :the choice of the donor compounds and receptor compounds ,the control of stereoselectivity ,and the development of some new glycosidic reaction catalyst .In recent years ,important progress has been made in this research area .Now ,we predominately make a summary and review on the progress of methods for the synthesis of GM3 and derivatives .