The extensive consumption of fossil oil and the rapid accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions have caused long-term changes in the global climate and environment, sparking widespread interest in society for CO₂ bioconversion technologies as a means to address energy transition and climate change. As a new-generation biorefinery platform based on synthetic biology, the synthetic phototrophic community comprises closely cooperating phototrophic and heterotrophic microorganisms. This community is capable of efficiently converting light energy directly into biomass and a variety of chemicals through mutualistic metabolic division of labor among community members. Synthetic phototrophic community is one of the potential ways to achieve sustainable carbon-negative biomanufacturing, and has attracted widespread attention attributed to its advantages in applicability and robustness. In recent years, with the rapid development of systems biology and synthetic biotechnology, a variety of research efforts have been applied to the design and optimization of synthetic phototrophic communities, achieving stable progress and promoting the understanding of phototrophic community production. In this review, we briefly introduced an overview of the advances and current status of synthetic phototrophic community, including mutualistic mechanisms related to element, energy, and information flow. Subsequently, the unique advantages of phototrophic community were outlined. Meanwhile, recent systems biology approaches of phototrophic community were summarized, such as integrative analysis of multi-omics data, genome-scale metabolic modelling, flux balance analysis and community performance predictive algorithms. We also focused on the design and optimization strategies, such as chassis upgrading, immobilization/compartmentalization techniques, and enhanced internal multilayer regulation of synthetic phototrophic community, as well as the progress of their applications in various fields. Furthermore, we analyzed and discussed the constraints and challenges for the further deployment of synthetic phototrophic community on a larger scale, ranging from photosynthetic carbon production rate, intermediate organic matter selection, external predator invasion, to light distribution under high density cultivation. Finally, the future research strategies and engineering directions of synthetic phototrophic community encompassing semiconductor biohybrids, fine regulation of interspecies interaction and multi-omics community model construction were proposed. We conclude by providing a perspective on the future application scenarios of synthetic phototrophic communities in biochemistry, biomedicine, bioremediation and bioagriculture.