In the summer of 2022, the Yangtze River Basin experienced unprecedented heat waves, drawing considerable attention from the scientific community. Affected by over a month of record-breaking high temperatures and droughts, this extreme event not only caused escalating losses to human health, the economy, and the environment, but also exacerbated food insecurity and hindered sustainable development. Therefore, a more comprehensive understanding of extreme heat in the Yangtze River Basin during the summer of 2022 is essential to identify the drivers of extreme event variability under global warming, assess the impacts of human activity and natural variability, and evaluate potential climate risks. This study first reviews the main characteristics, formation mechanisms, and causes of the extreme heat in the Yangtze River Basin in the summer of 2022, and further summarizes the research progress on the event over the past three years. The results showed that the 2022 summer high temperature in the Yangtze River Basin was a rare extreme heat event. Its occurrence was primarily driven by atmospheric circulation anomalies related to the western Pacific subtropical high and the South Asian high, the triple La Niña phenomenon, the Atlantic and Indian SST forcing, and land-atmosphere feedback mechanism (e.g., soil moisture and air temperature). In addition to natural variability, human activity is the dominant factor influencing heat extremes. Without anthropogenic forcing, such extremes would have been highly unlikely. Such rare heat waves are projected to become more frequent under ongoing global warming. Finally, the paper highlights key research challenges and knowledge gaps associated with extreme heat events.