With the frequent occurrence of major environmental events, environmental pollution, and the ecological destruction, increasingly serious, ecological risk research has drawn extensive attention from scholars and governments in various countries. The need for environmental management and decision-making has promoted continual expansion of the field of ecological risk. Research topics, perspectives, and methods are becoming increasingly abundant. A comprehensive and systematic analysis of the whole field of ecological risk research is urgently needed. In this study, 2304 articles on ecological risk from the Web of Science core collection database were used as research objects, and Citespace software was used to draw a knowledge map of ecological risk research and make a visual analysis of the literature to understand the status of current international research, explore research hotspots and trends, and summarize the research topic evolution. The study found that: (1) The number of papers published in international ecological risk research has experienced three development stages: slow growth, steady growth, and rapid growth. (2) The study on ecological risk is divided into three stages: foundation, growth, and expansion, while the current research hotspots are "spatial distribution, ecosystem service, urban soil, source analysis, marine sediment." (3) The evaluation of ecological risk research has evolved from small-scale, single risk source and single risk receptor, to large-scale, multiple risk sources and multiple risk receptors. (4)The European and American countries and scholars laid the foundation for the research in this field. China started late but has developed rapidly. In the face of ecological risk research, multidisciplinary research papers with quantitative and qualitative visual summarization can make a more comprehensive and precise analysis of the research area. Combined with citation analysis, and the visualization software Citespace and bibliometrics, this study strives to show clearly the research hotspots and trends in the research field, the evolution of research topics, and the current situation of the research clearly. It will provide useful references and inspiration for future ecological risk research.