Land desertification, caused by global change and intensified human activities, threaten global biodiversity. Soil fauna, as a crucial role component of biodiversity, plays an important role in biogeochemical cycles and the ecosystem stability. To deeply understand how soil fauna communities respond to land degradation and their role in ecological restoration, this study summarizes domestic and international research on the response of soil fauna to desertification and its role in restoration, and proposes future research directions. The results show that land desertification primarily affects soil fauna through changes in soil quality, plant traits, and soil microbes. Distinctions in the response of different soil fauna groups (nematodes, mites, ants and beetles) to land desertification. Both natural restoration and artificial vegetation construction restoration can contribute to soil fauna diversity recovery. Soil fauna plays a role in desertified land restoration by improving soil structure, increasing soil fertility, facilitating organic matter decomposition and nutrient turnover, and ecological indication significance. For future research on soil fauna in desert ecosystems, we propose the following recommendations: 1) Combining indoor micro-experiments with controlled field experiments and long-term monitoring. Integrating above-ground and below-ground ecosystems to carry out a multifactorial analytical study of desertification on soil fauna. 2) Analyzing the effects of ecological degradation and restoration measures on the multidimensional functional traits of soil fauna, focusing on the response mechanism of trait changes within the community to desertification, so as to provide new evidence for the adaptive maintenance mechanism of soil fauna and the mechanism of community construction in the extreme arid environment. 3) Exploring the mechanism of the loss of soil fauna diversity on soil carbon cycle process, soil multifunctionality, and its value in desert ecosystem multi-service application, providing scientific basis for the stability of desert ecosystems, the assessment of restoration effect and fine management. 4) Emphasizing the impact of the ecological restoration process of desertified land and its measures on soil fauna diversity, because it is directly related to the structural recovery, functional maintenance and stability of desert ecosystems.