Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is a water-soluble and biodegradable polymer. PVA is also considered an environmentally friendly material, which made it one of the most synthetic polymers used in many industrial applications. This review identifies PVA in terms of its properties and the different methods of spinning PVA fibers to be used in textile applications. There are different spinning methods that are used in production of PVA fibers such as wet spinning, melt spinning, gel spinning, and dry-wet spinning. In addition to some modifications that may be carried out to improve the properties of PVA fibers such as esterification, etherification or acetalization of hydroxyl groups. Also, blending PVA fibers with other natural and synthetic fibers such as cotton, wool, Tencel, viscose, acrylic, and polyester is carried out to acquire a textile fiber with superior properties to the final yarns such as comfort, thermal properties, air permeability, and water absorption. PVA blended fibers were produced with different techniques namely core yarns (hollow center yarns), blended yarns (microporous yarns), and doubled yarns (reduced twist yarns). Each technique presents different properties to the resulting yarn. PVA is classified as non-hydrolysable known as high-performance fiber and partially hydrolysable and hydrolysable. The applications in which PVA was used are many and varied. Whereby, PVA is utilized in manufacturing the environmental friendly packaging. Also, it is used in textile industry to form a protective layer for warp sizing to reduce yarn breakage during the weaving process. The biomedicine application is also one of the most important applications that tended to benefit from polyvinyl alcohol.