Abstract The rapid increase of multidimensional data (a.k.a. tensor) like videos brings new challenges for low-rank data modeling approaches such as dynamic data size, complex high-order relations, and multiplicity of low-rank structures. Resolving these challenges require a new tensor analysis method that can perform tensor data analysis online, which however is still absent. In this paper, we propose an Online Robust Lowrank Tensor Modeling (ORLTM) approach to address these challenges. ORLTM dynamically explores the high-order correlations across all tensor modes for low-rank structure modeling. To analyze mixture data from multiple subspaces, ORLTM introduces a new dictionary learning component. ORLTM processes data streamingly and thus requires quite low memory cost that is independent of data size. This makes ORLTM quite suitable for processing large-scale tensor data. Empirical studies have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method on both synthetic data and one practical task, i.e., video background subtraction. In addition, we provide theoretical analysis regarding computational complexity and memory cost, demonstrating the efficiency of ORLTM rigorously.