Xinjiang is an important grain and commodity cotton production base in northwest China. Affected by the geographical environment, the frequent droughts have caused great losses to social economy and agricultural production. Based on MODIS remote sensing data and the meteorological data, this paper estimated the Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI), and analyzed the inter-annual and intra-annual variation characteristics of drought in Xinjiang from 2000 to 2016, as well as the relationship between drought and meteorological factors. The results show that:1) the TVDI could effectively describe the drought situation in Xinjiang and was suitable for drought monitoring in this region. 2) From 2000 to 2016, the spatial distribution of the TVDI showed strong regional differentiation, showing that the areas north of the Tianshan Mountains and Kunlun Mountains were relatively humid, while the Tarim Basin was relatively dry. The perennial mean value of Xinjiang TVDI was 0.751, indicating that Xinjiang was in a state of moderate drought. The seasonal spatial distribution of TVDI within one year was significantly different. The drought degree in different seasons was in order of summer > spring > autumn > winter. 3) The monthly variation of TVDI in Xinjiang showed a trend of increasing firstly and then decreasing, with the minimum value in January (0.267) and the maximum value in June (0.930). Among the 14 prefectures, Ili, Kazakhstan, Altay and, Boltala were basically drought-free for many years. 4) The drought degree of different land use types in last 17 years was expressed as woodland < grassland < building land < cultivated land. The main characteristics of drought type transfer were the increase of no drought type areas and the decrease of light drought type, moderate drought type, heavy drought type, and special drought type areas. 5) The dynamic change of drought in Xinjiang was closely related to topography, temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, etc. Among them, non-meteorological factors had the largest proportion, and rainfall and temperature had less impact. Among the meteorological factors, the area affected by rainfall was relatively large, so the drought in Xinjiang was mainly affected by rainfall.