Abstract: With the rapid growth of wireless network services, the scarce wireless spectrum resources have become a bottleneck restricting the development of wireless communication technologies. Cognitive Radio (CR) technology provides a very effective technical solution to alleviate the contradiction between spectrum resource scarcity and the growing demand for wireless services through the secondary utilization of licensed spectrum. As one of the key technologies of CR, spectrum prediction technique plays an important role in reducing system energy consumption, improving system sensitivity, reducing spectrum conflicts and increasing system capacity. Therefore, an in-depth and comprehensive study on the research status and the latest progress of spectrum prediction techniques in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) were conducted. The spectrum prediction technique and its application in CRNs were analyzed from the perspectives of spectrum sensing, spectrum decision, spectrum mobility and spectrum sharing. The future development trend and challenges of spectrum prediction technique were pointed out in the end of the paper.