Spinal cord injury is a central nervous system disease with high mortality and disability rates and poor reversibility. Spinal cord injury is a serious worldwide public health problem, and has a complex physiopathologic mechanism that remains unclear. Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular process that is essential in the steady state of spinal cord neurons with terminal differentiation and leads to cell survival or death in different environments. In recent years, much attention has been paid to autophagy and relevant signaling pathways regulating autophagy. Clarifying the chain relationship of spinal cord injury, signaling pathways, and autophagy may aid in the understanding of the dynamic pathological changes that occur after spinal cord injury and clarify whether therapeutic activation or inhibition of autophagy is helpful for functional recovery after spinal cord injury. This paper reviewed the latest research progress on the mechanism of autophagy and relevant signaling pathways in spinal cord injury to provide new ideas for targeted therapy.