Thermotherapy has become another important tumor treatment after surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and targeted treatment. Magnetic hyperthermia (MH) is a new type of hyperthermia, which has attracted widespread attention due to its advantages of non-invasiveness / minimal invasiveness, high efficiency and good tissue penetration. It provides a new option for the molecular level treatment of malignant tumors with high efficacy and low toxicity, which has become a new research direction of tumor treatment. Magnetic materials and suitable magnetic fields are needed to realize MH. Iron oxide nanoparticles (IONs) are widely studied as MH agents because of their high biocompatibility and heating ability. In this article, the research progress on magnetic iron oxide nanomaterials and MH combined with antitumor therapy based on magnetic nanoparticles were analyzed, and the potential application of MH in cancer treatment was reviewed.