  The majority of known Galactic black holes reside in low-mass X-ray binaries.
They are rare and fascinating objects, providing unique information on strong
gravity, accretion disc physics, and stellar and binary evolution. There is no
doubt that our understanding of the formation of black hole low-mass X-ray
binaries has significantly advanced in the past decade. However, some key
issues are still unresolved. In this paper we briefly summarize the
observational clues and theoretical progress on the formation of black hole
low-mass X-ray binaries.
