Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is a long-range dipole-dipole interaction that occurs between one or more excited fluorophore (donor) and a proximal ground state fluorophore (acceptor). In the distance-dependent photophysical process, energy is transferred between donor and acceptor in a non-radiative pathway, resulting in fluorescence quenching of the donor and fluorescence enhancement of the acceptor. In general, various fluorescent materials constructed based on FRET mechanism should have the following prerequisites: 1) an adjacent distance between donor and acceptor (1-10 nm); 2) an efficient overlap between the donor emission and acceptor absorption; 3) a favorable mutual orientation between donor emission moment, acceptor absorption moment and their separation vector. Based on the FRET strategy, many types of materials including organic molecules, polymers, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), metal nanoparticles (NPs), transition metal complexes, carbon quantum dots (CQDs) and carbon dots (CDs) have been rationally designed over the past decade, which are widely utilized for photocatalysis, anti-counterfeiting, encryption, bioimaging, and fluorescence sensing. In various applications, it has been an interesting and promising research field to construct artificial light-harvesting systems (LHSs) based on FRET, which not only helps people to gain deeper insights into the photosynthesis process in nature, but also plays a guiding role to mimic the natural light-harvesting systems.