Display omitted •Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) is an aggressive and rare disease.•Several prognostic models were developed for PCNSL on a limited number of PCNSL patients.•Older prognostic models, although externally validated, had variable prognostic significance in newer studies.•Newer prognostic models mainly lacked external validation and usage of appropriate methods for model comparison.•Further studies are needed to determine the optimal prognostic model for PCNSL patients. Over the last decade, several prognostic models have been proposed for primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL), but consensus on the optimal model for these patients is absent or lacking. This study aims to review available prognostic models for PCNSL and discuss their prognostic features. A comprehensive literature search performed in Pubmed/Embase identified ten studies with a variable number of analysed patients (range 32–3453), which proposed 12 prognostic models. Age and performance status were the most important prognostic factors in PCNSL and an integral part of the majority of the proposed models. However, there is no universally accepted prognostic model for PCNSL owning to a number of limitations such as a small number of patients, limited samples obtained for genetic analysis, retrospective nature of studies, single centre studies, and lack of validation. Future multicentre studies are necessary to determine the optimal prognostic model for PCNSL by combining different prognostic markers of significance.