Oxygen detection techniques are used in various fields, such as chemical or clinical analysis and environmental monitoring. Recently, a variety of devices and sensors based on photo-luminescent or photoexcited state quenching of organic dyes have been developed to measure oxygen partial pressure on the solid surface. Many optical oxygen sensors are composed of organic dyes, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pyrene, pyrene derivative etc.), transition metal complexes (Ru2+, Os2+, Ir3+ etc.), metalloporphyrins (Pt2+, Pd2+, Zn2+ etc.) and fullerene (C-60 and C-70) immobilized in oxygen permeable polymer films. In this review, the properties of various oxygen permeable polymers for matrix of optical oxygen sensor and various dye probes for oxygen sensing are described.