The ironmaking technology of modern blast furnace has a history of over 200 years, under the development background of global "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality," carbon is directly consumed and large amounts of CO₂ are emitted in ironmaking process of the blast furnace due to coke as a reducing agent, heat source, carburizing agent, and burden skeleton material in the ironmaking technology of blast furnace. Even today, the ironmaking process of blast furnace cannot completely eliminate its dependence on coke. The intensified smelting technologies such as oxygen enrichment, pulverized coal injection, high blast temperature and high top pressure are utilized in modern blast furnace, so the production efficiency of the blast furnace has been significantly improved and the fuel consumption has been substantially reduced. With the continuous growth of global iron production, high-quality iron ore resources are gradually depleting. Meanwhile, to reduce production costs, the supply of lower-grade iron ores has been increasing year by year. In order to adapt to changes in international iron ore resources and optimize the blast furnace burden structure, it is essential to study carbon reduction technologies for the ironmaking process from an entire process, particularly using low-grade iron ores to realize high-value utilization and conversion. The optimization of the blast furnace burden structure not only improves the physical, chemical, and metallurgical properties of the burdens themselves but, more importantly, achieves systematic carbon reduction and coordinated emission reduction across the entire process of sintering, pelletizing, and blast furnace operations. In order to fully exploit the optimal utilization of resources, the sintering, pelletizing, and blast furnace processes shall be rationally matched through analytical optimization of procedural functions, integration optimization between procedures, and process reconfiguration optimization. Additionally, through optimization of the process structure and the process network, the process set of the ironmaking system can achieve dynamic orderly, coordinated continuous, and green, low-carbon operation. These are important technical approaches in ironmaking structure optimization of blast furnace for carbon neutrality to realize low-carbon emission reduction. In this paper the evolutionary development of blast furnace burden structures are studied and analyzed, the impact of different burden structures on blast furnace operation is discussed, the technical challenges and carbon reduction benefits of large-proportion pellet smelting in blast furnaces are analyzed, the principles and basic approaches for future burden structure optimization are proposed to indicate the goals and prospects for the future low-carbon development of sintering, pelletizing and blast furnace operations.