Abstract: The study of soundscape in foreign countries has experienced decades of development, so it is of important reference value for the study of soundscape in China to systematically sort out and summarize the foreign research achievements. This paper takes English references in soundscape from 1998 to 2018 in "Web of Science" database as study objects, and uses the scientific econometric analysis software-"CiteSpace" to show the distribution characteristics of disciplines and periodicals and the theoretical basis and hotspots of foreign researches. It is found that foreign soundscape researches show obviously multidisciplinary characteristics, and the main development venation of foreign soundscape research is as follows:from continuing the idea of Schafer's theory to paying attention to human perception of soundscape, to taking into account the response of non-human beings to soundscape in the biosphere, and then to paying attention to the ecological characteristics and evolution mechanism of soundscape at the regional level under the guidance of "pattern-processes". The expansion of soundscape research framework enables foreign soundscape research to explain and understand soundscape phenomena more and more comprehensively and scientifically and to lay a good foundation for the development of soundscape practice. The shortcomings are:the research contents need to be deepened; the research disciplines need to be integrated; the standardization construction of soundscape needs to be strengthened; and the popularization of soundscape needs to be improved. Domestic soundscape research also needs to make up for these shortcommings actively in order to achieve leap-forward development.