The renewal energy technologies are increasingly popular to ensure future energy sustenance and address environmental issues. The tides are enormous and consistent untapped resource of renewable energy. The growing interest in exploring tidal energy has compelling reasons such as security and diversity of supply, intermittent but predictable and limited social and environmental impacts. The tidal energy industry is undergoing an increasing shift towards diffuser augmented turbines. The reason is the higher power output of diffuser augmented turbines compared to conventional open turbines. The purpose of this study is to present a comprehensive review of diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines. The components, relative advantages, limitations and design parameters of diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines are presented in detail. CFD simulation of NACA 0016 airfoil is carried out to explore its potential for designing a diffuser. The core issues associated with diffuser augmented horizontal axis tidal current turbines are also discussed.