Abstract: The cellular translation machinery is hijacked by large amounts of viral proteins upon viral infection. As a result, the unfolded or misfolded proteins accumulated in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum leads to ER stress (ERs), which triggers the unfolded protein response (UPR) or programmed cell death (PCD). On the basis of the ERs-related UPR signaling induced by animal viruses, this review summarizes recent understanding of the ERs signaling induced by abiotic factors in Arabidopsis and triggered by plant viral infection, reviews the ERs induced in plant virus infected cell, including the morphological changes of ER membranes and the activation of UPR genes, analyzes the vital role of ERs signaling in viral infection, and points out that the viruses manipulate UPR in favor of their replication and the host initiates PCD of apoptosis to resist viruses. Little is known about the crosstalk between different UPR arms and PCD, and signal strength of UPR regulated by different viruses. Searching for the key regulators of virus induced host UPR and escaped from host PCD is the developing direction of antiviral research.