Carbohydrates have gained a lot of appreciation in the past few decades due to their important roles in numerous biological events.Acquiring a structurally well-defined carbohydrate compound is essential for the understanding of its functions.Although some innovative methods have been developed for the synthesis of complex oligosaccharides,glycan synthesis is in general still a time-consuming and difficult work.Herein,we will introduce the preactivation-based glycosylation strategy,which is an efficient protocol independent of the reactivity of glycosyl donor.This review will focus on summarizing the versatile applications of preactivation strategy in stereoselective glycosylation and one-pot assembly of biologically important oligosaccharides and even polysaccharides.