The damage or loss of articular cartilage leads to progressive disease such as arthritis, which seriously affects people＇s quality of life. The potential for self-healing is extremely low due to the lack of neural control, vascular supply, and the poor proliferative capacity of chondrocytes. The limitation and complexity of autologous chondrocyte transplantation has hindered the wide application of this technique. Mesenchymal stem cells have enormous proliferative capacity and retain the potential of differentiation. However, the potential of targeted chondrogenic differentiation requires external factors such as cytokines, scaffold materials, media, etc. In recent years, it is an important research direction to find the suitable active factor to induce chondrogenic differentiation. In this paper, the research progress on the chondrogenic differentiation related activity factors of mesenchymal stem cells was reviewed.