The glacier is one of the most important parts of the biome. Because of global climate change, the retreat of most glaciers worldwide has been accelerated and areas are exposed that the retreated ice cap had covered. These areas are called glacier retreat areas or glacier foreland, and primary succession begins there when the area is exposed. With succession moving forward, cycles of matters are built step by step, biomass and total amounts of soil C and N biological increase gradually. The C and N input into the ecosystem is originally primarily supported by mineralization of allochthonous matter and gradually shifts to primarily C and N fixation. The ecosystem development is mainly limited by soil C and N content the early stages of succession, whereas P turns into the primary limit factor at the last stage of succession. Soil develops gradually through the successional area and accelerates niche differentiation, microbial community biomass, and diversity of bacteria, archea, fungi, viruses and other types of microbes increase until the climax community that the area is capable of supporting. With the amelioration of habitats, the replacement of different microbes that possess different eco-strategies leads to variation in the microbial community in each successional stage. Over all, the abundance, structure, and activity of the microbial community presents a gradient of variation with the pace of succession. Global climate change exerts multiple effects on the successional results of glacier retreat areas and feedback synthetically to climate change, thus making it difficult to estimate the net effect that climate change exerts on ecosystem succession in glacier retreat areas. This paper reviews recent research results with regard to microbial community succession in glacier retreat areas and comprehensively describes three aspects of cycles of matters, microbial community succession, and effects from climate change, and points out the weakness and gaps in our present knowledge.