By employing the bibliometric platform and the visualized knowledge graph method, this paper analyzed 496 literatures in the cross-research filed of ecosystem services (ES) and marine spatial planning (MSP). The literatures were published from 2000 to 2019 and taken from the Web of Science database. This research reveals the whole image of the application of ES in the international MSP studies, especially the research hotspots and the evolution path. Results demonstrate that, during the past two decades, the international academic communities have focused on seven hot topics, including conservation status, marine protected areas, marine spatial planning, social-ecosystem, valuation, trade-offs and offshore fisheries. In the field of MSP, ES has experienced progressive research from being a protection goal to a technical tool, and then to a governance path. Accordingly, the purpose of international scholars’ application of ES has expanded from the pursuit of technical optimal solutions to reasonable schemes for spatial governance. In this progress, it is both of the ES-oriented human-sea coupling mechanism and the transformation of ES knowledge into practice that have been the main research challenges. The challenges require for making a breakthrough, which may start with considering a multi-disciplinary perspective, macro and micro analyses, as well as research method innovation. Against the reforming background of China’s territorial spatial planning, the Chinese researchers should go beyond the instrumental rationality of planning and the limitation in the application of marine ES valuation. Domestic studies could attempt to use ES for guiding the cognition of planning ideal, enhancing the refinement of spatial governance, and improving planning fairness and efficiency. Finally, the feasible paths for ES application to China’s MSP should be explored, so as to promote the development of China’s spatial planning theory and provide practical guarantee for people’s marine well-being.