Abstract During recent years, advances in drone technologies have made them applicable in various fields of industry, and their popularity continues to grow. In this paper, the academic contributions on drones routing problems are analyzed between 2005 and 2019 to identify the main characteristics of these types of problems, as well as the research trends and recent improvements. The literature is classified according to the objectives optimized, solution methods, applications, constraints, and whether they use a complementary vehicle or not. Finally, a discussion for trends and future research is presented.