Pyrolysis of renewable biomass has been developed as a method to produce green fuels and chemicals in response to energy security concerns as well as to alleviate environmental issues incurred with fossil fuel usage. However, pyrolysis oils still have limited commercial application, mainly because unprocessed oils cannot be readily blended with current petroleum-based transportation fuels. To better understand these challenges, researchers have applied diverse characterization techniques in the development of bio-oil studies. In particular, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a key spectroscopic characterization method through analysis of bio-oil components. This review highlights the NMR strategies for pyrolysis oil characterization and critically discusses the applications of H-1, C-13, P-31, F-19, and two-dimensional (2-D NMR) analyses such as heteronuclear single quantum correlation (HSQC) in representative pyrolysis oil studies.