Recently, with the development of industrial informatization and intellectualization, the development of smart bearings has attracted a lot of significant attention in an attempt to reduce maintenance costs and increase reliability by providing online health condition monitoring. As a result of advances in miniaturization and low power consumption of wireless sensor nodes (WSNs), self-powered technologies have been considered as a promising method to achieve autonomous WSNs in smart bearings. Although the self-powered technology has received considerable achievements, there are less reviews covering the development of self-powered structures towards smart bearing and providing potential guidelines for the future development. To bridge the gap, this paper presents a comprehensive state-of-the-art review and guidelines on self-powered methods to create smart bearings, including outlining the underlying theory, modeling methods, methodologies and technologies. The topology of a self-powered smart bearing is clarified, and the mechanisms and benefits of piezoelectricity, electromagnetism, triboelectricity, thermoelectricity and wireless power transfer for powering WSNs in smart bearing are discussed. To improve the applicability of self-powered smart bearing in a range of working conditions, the design methodologies and technologies of a variety of transducers are reviewed to provide guidelines for performance enhancement. Finally, the future challenges and perspectives are proposed for outlining potential research directions and opportunities in future self-powered smart bearing systems, including the impact on bearing performance, engineering implementation, reliability, power management and storage.