Lactate is one of the major biomarkers to assess the physical fitness of human in clinical or sports medicine. The proper and well‐timed lactate determination can avoid some exigent conditions including hemorrhage, respiratory distress, sepsis, and hypoxia. Therefore, rapid, facile, selective, and reliable detection of lactate have gained appreciation lately. Among the various lactate detection methods, electrochemical method is the most rapid, convenient, and sensitive technique. Specifically, nanomaterial‐based nonenzymatic electrochemical lactate sensors are much desirable to solve the demerits and stability issues of enzymatic lactate sensors. Numerous materials including metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, metal–organic frameworks, molecularly imprinted polymers, and carbons were used as electrocatalysts to achieve highly sensitive lactate sensors. This present review mainly focuses on the recent developments of these materials for enzyme‐free lactate oxidation and the future prospective of electrode modification catalysts for lactate sensors. This review summarizes recent trends in the development and applications of electrochemical nonenzymatic lactate sensors based on nanostructured materials including metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, metal–organic frameworks, and molecularly imprinted polymers and carbons. In addition, the analytical performance such as dynamic range, sensitivity, detection limit, and so forth is also highlighted. Detection challenges and future perspective are briefly discussed for development of the lactate sensors toward miniaturization and commercialization purpose.