Plasma spraying technique was used to deposit thin TiO2-based photocatalytic coatings on a foamed aluminum. Before spraying, the composites of nano-TiO2 powder (P25) and nanoZnO/CeO2/SnO2 powders were agglomerated into microsized powders by a spray-drying process. XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS and the photocatalytic activity evaluation by the decomposition of benzene were applied to characterize the starting powders and the coatings, respectively. The results showed that all the three plasma sprayed TiO2-based coatings were the mixture phases of anatase and rutile. The XPS spectra results revealed that the oxygen element was composed of three kinds of chemical states, i.e., crystal lattice oxygen, hydroxyl oxygen and physical-adsorbed oxygen. The plasma sprayed 90%TiO2-10%CeO2 coating and 90%TiO2-10%SnO2 coating exhibited similar photocatalytic activity, which was higher than that of 90%TiO2-10%ZnO coating.