Coal is a promising carbonaceous precursor for high-quality porous carbon because of its high carbon content, abundant reserves and low price. The preparation of porous electrode materials for supercapacitors from coal is one of the important routes to realize the high value-added utilization of coal. The results show that the electrochemical properties of coal-based porous carbon electrode materials can be effectively improved by adjusting the pore structure and improving the surface chemical activity. The pore size distribution can be adjusted by three methods: physical and chemical co-activation, template method combined with chemical activation and combination of different chemical activators. The combined physical activation and chemical activation method mainly uses water vapor or CO2 to assist the activation process of KOH, so as to obtain a large number of micropores and a certain amount of mesoporous pores, and realize the synergistic control of the pore structure and wettability of coal-based porous carbon. The combination of template method and chemical activation can obtain the same pore structure as template agent, and at the same time, KOH activation can further produce abundant micropores, thus achieving reasonable pore size distribution. In addition to using template agent, a large number of impurities contained in the carbon precursor can also be used as self-template. The adjustment of pore structure can also be realized by combining different chemical activators. For example, different pore size distribution can be obtained by combining K+ and Na+ ions with different ionic sizes. Using the fluidity of KCl at high temperature, the intermediate products of KOH can be carried to a wider and deeper extent, so as to realize the transformation from microporous to mesoporous. The surface chemical activity can be improved in 2 ways: by the pre-oxidation of carbon precursors and the introduction of heteroatoms. If the raw coal is pretreated by strong acid or strong oxidant, the organic oxygen content of the prepared carbon material can be increased, the active sites are increased and the wettability is improved. Heteroatoms can be introduced into carbon materials by dopant doping, the most applied of which is N doping. The introduced nitrogen-containing structures mainly include pyrro-N (N-5), pyridin-N (N-6), Quaternary N(N-Q), and pyridine-N-oxide (N-X). In addition, O, B, S and P are the common doped heteroatoms. Another way to introduce heteroatoms is through co-carbonization of coal with biomass, in which biomass acts as both carbon and heteroatom source. The wettability, electrical conductivity and structural stability of carbon materials can be improved by doping heteroatoms, and a certain amount of pseudocapacitance can be produced. In this paper, the research progress of coal-based porous carbon electrode materials in recent years was reviewed from the above aspects, the advantages and disadvantages of different modification methods were analyzed, the existing problems were discussed, and the future research trend of coal-based porous carbon for supercapacitors was prospected.