Based on the bibliometric method, 770 papers on sports culture education collected in CSSCI on CNKI since 1998 were visualized, and the scientific knowledge graph was drawn by the CiteSpace V visual analysis software to study the number of papers on sports culture education, scientific research institutions, authors, research focus and evolutionary processes to further gain an overall understanding of the trends and dynamics of sports education research in China, which provides a reference for the direction of sports culture education research. Research conclusions: Firstly, the research on sports culture education in China began in 1998, and the number of publications reached the peak in 2014, which afterwards still remained high despite slight decline. Secondly, normal colleges and universities are the main force for the research on sports culture education. Thirdly, in terms of the evolutionary process, the research on sports culture education continuously keeps eyes on school sports, and transfer its focus to the competitive sports and mass sports at the later stage, indicating that sports culture education is a systematic project involving the entire population and requires the participation of the whole society.