Abstract: Seismic isolation, as an efficient and reliable technology, has been widely used in engineering structures to enhance their seismic performance. With the increase in the size of seismic isolation bearings and the development of new types of bearings such as high damping rubber bearings and friction pendulum bearings, traditional testing methods are facing new challenges in testing seismic performance. For example, compression shear tests or vibration table tests cannot accurately reproduce the dynamic interaction between seismic isolation bearings and structures. The hybrid experiment provides an effective means for studying the nonlinear and dynamic characteristics of seismic isolation structures by dividing them into numerical substructures and experimental substructures (seismic isolation bearings). Substructure technology enables mixed experiments to be conducted on a large scale and at full scale in an economically efficient manner. This study reviews the application of hybrid testing methods in seismic isolation structures, introducing for the first time the pseudo dynamic substructure test, real-time hybrid test, and vibration table hybrid test of seismic isolation structures. Meanwhile, the challenges faced by hybrid testing methods were discussed in detail, including substructure modeling, online model updates, and implementation of force displacement hybrid control strategies.