Articular cartilage as a load-bearing connective tissues may often be caused defects by trauma,sports, degenerative or age-related diseases. As articular cartilage has a limited inherent repair capacity, a large variety of treatment approaches including autologous chondrocyte transplantation, microfracture and mosaicplasty methods have been developed. However, there are limitations in these strategies especially when using autologous chondrcytes. Mesenchymal stem cells are considered the most promising seed cells in the study of tissue engineered cartilage. This review focuses on the induction of mesenchymal stem cells into chondrocytes in vitro and their application in cartilage repair.