Abstract Wind farm layout design is a complex optimization problem consisting of number of design objectives and constraints. Different variations of this problem have been solved using several optimization techniques. Iterative heuristics are well-known optimization techniques that have been applied to a variety of complex optimization problems. This paper briefly outlines the design issues and constraints involved in the wind farm layout design, computational complexity of the problem, and single-objective and multi-objective aspects of the problem. The main focus of the paper is a brief survey of all iterative non-deterministic algorithms that have been applied to solve the wind farm layout design problem.