The construction industry is dynamic in nature and contributing to a great extent to the economic growth of any country yet being affected the most by influential factors causing distressed in the stakeholders. A systematic review was carried out in this study to evaluate the role of inflation in construction as inflation is considered as one of the most influential factors in the construction industry. Scopus database was selected to extract the English research articles from the year 2009 to 2019 with keywords of �Inflation� AND �Construction� in the field of engineering. Total of 210 articles was extracted and after reviewing the titles and the abstract in-depth, only 20 articles were left for further assessment. It was revealed that the major impact of inflation comes as cost and time overrun in construction projects and the construction industry is at high risk due to fluctuation in inflation over time. It is therefore recommended to consider the inflation before project start. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.