Applications of nanotechnology have grown enormously in recent years in various fields, such as drug delivery, energy storage, information technology, electronic devices and petroleum industry. The petroleum industry is using nanotechnology in a variety of applications, but the use of nanofluids with base fluid in the presence of the electromagnetic field in the reservoir for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is a novel technique. After primary and secondary recovery from the reservoir, there is still an estimated amount of 50 oil remains there in most reservoirs, which cannot be extracted by conventional methods. Some studies regarding the magnetic and dielectric nanofluids in the presence of electromagnetic radiation have been carried out to recover the residual oil from depleted oil reservoirs. Such studies have shown promising results and yielded a consistent improvement in comparison to the conventional polymers and brine used in the industrial practice. However, some challenges like low sweep efficiency, potential formation damage, rheological improvement and high costs affect the further application of nanofluids for EOR technologies. The current study is a review of the activation of nanofluids using electromagnetic radiation for enhanced oil recovery, and the evaluation of mechanisms adopted for the prospects of this technology. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.