At present, there is no consensus on the criteria for diagnosis and classification of vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), and there is a lack of comparability among the published diagnostic criteria for VCI, which affects the efficiency of diagnosis, and then affects the estimation of prevalence, the development of related research and the treatment of VCI. For that reason, 122 participants (81% of them were academic researchers) from 27 countries participated in the online survey using Delphi method. They reviewed the relevant concepts of VCI to develop a new consensus among experts. If the agreement rate reached 67%, that was to say, the consensus was formed. In 2017, the Vascular Impairment of Cognition Classification Consensus Study (VICCCS) was released. VICCCS redefines the conceptual model of VCI, including the severity of VCI and the discrimination of subtypes, as well as new VCI-related standardized terms, in order to solve the differences in understanding of VCI. At the same time, VICCCS has proposed potential research topics in the future. The development and release of VICCCS provide diagnostic and classification criteria for VCI research, and lay a foundation for collaborative research with larger sample size in the future.