The acceleration of high-energy ions by the interaction of plasma with ultra-intense laser pulses is a frontier in the fields of laser plasma physics and accelerator physics. Laser-driven ion acceleration has achieved great success and triggered plenty of new applications after nearly twenty years’ development. This paper reviews the important experimental progress of laser-driven high-energy proton acceleration, discusses some critical issues that influence the acceleration. It also gives an introduction to new acceleration schemes developed in recent years, which promise to generate over 200 MeV protons.