Oligomeric surfactants，as a novel class of surfactant with superior efficiency at very low concentration，have shown promising applications in the fields of enhanced oil recovery，pharmaceuticals，corrosion inhibitors，and so on. Oligomeric surfactants are composed of two or more amphiphilic moieties，which are chemically linked by a spacer group. They bridge the gap between monomeric surfactants and polymeric surfactants. With the help of the spacer group，the spatial distance of multiple amphiphilic moieties becomes closer，contributing to the stronger aggregation ability of the oligomeric surfactants. Meanwhile，the structure of the spacer group and the topological configuration are more diversified，resulting in multifarious transition processes of molecular configuration and aggregation morphology. These characteristics make them show unique advantages as highly-efficient oilfield chemicals and stimuli-responsive soft materials. But the difficult synthesis processes have been identified as the bottleneck of their systematic investigations. In this review，the synthesis methods of linear，star-like and ring-type oligomeric cationic surfactants，which were classified by the spatial topological structure，were summarized in detail. Specially，some facile reaction routes using polyols，polyamines，polyphenols，polyepoxides and polycarboxylic acids（esters）as raw materials were introduced in detail. Through these reaction routes，star-shaped intermediates，which were the backbone of spacer groups，could be well prepared based on some active groups such as hydroxyl，amino，carboxyl and ester groups. Then star-shaped oligomeric cationic surfactants could be smoothly synthesized after the quaternization of terminal groups of the intermediates. By summarizing the synthesis routes of the above three series of oligomeric surfactants，it was suggested that the combination of esterification reaction， amidation reaction，Schiff base reaction and ring-opening reaction could be used to design and prepare novel oligomeric cationic quaternary ammonium surfactant，which was stimuli-responsive and biocompatible.