Polyketides represent an important class of structurally and functionally diverse secondary metabolites with high economic value. Among bacteria, Streptomycetes are the main producers of polyketides. To enhance polyketide production in Streptomyces hosts, rational metabolic engineering approaches have been applied, such as overexpressing rate-limiting enzymes, or transcriptional activator, increasing the supply of precursor, removing feedback inhibition by end products and heterologous expression of polyketide biosynthetic gene clusters. In this review, we discuss examples of successful metabolic engineering strategies used to improve polyketide production in Streptomycetes. Meanwhile, we also address future prospective, emerging synthetic biology strategies to dynamically adjust the metabolic fluxes of pathways related to polyketide synthesis.