Forest fires directly destroy forest resources, change the structure and function of forests, affect local and even global climate conditions and threaten human life and property. And forest fire will be more frequent in the context of global warming, so the study of forest fire prediction/forecast is vital. We obtained the daily forest fire data from the Thermal Anomalies/Fire Daily L3 product (MOD14A1) of Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and analyzed the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics in Southwest China during 2001-2018. The random forests algorithm was adopted to construct the dry and wet season's forest fire prediction models with full consideration of driving factors (contained meteorological elements, topography, fuel and vegetation). Then, we identified the main driving factors of forest fire occurrences through simulation in dry and wet seasons in Southwest China. The following major conclusions were drawn:(1) The forest fires were mainly concentrated in the most regions of Yunnan Province, southwestern Sichuan Province and southern Guizhou Province, and showed a significant agglomeration distribution. The forest fires mostly occurred in the dry season accounting for 96.5% of the total forest fires. The number of annual forest fires showed a staggered transformation with a significant increase trend during 2001-2014 and non-significant decrease trend after 2014. (2) The developed random forests algorithm-based forest fire prediction model archived good performances. The accuracy of the model in the training period were between 82.94%-83.99% and 85.12%-90.31%, and the Area Under Curve (AUC) values were between 0.908-0.914 and 0.922-0.965, respectively; the accuracy of the model in the testing period were 79.73% and 83.27%, and the AUC values were 0.886 and 0.855, respectively. (3) The elevation was the most important limiting factor to forest fire occurrences for both dry and wet seasons in Southwest China. The forest fires were concentrated in the mid-altitude areas, while they were less likely to occur in the low and high altitude areas, which was most likely related to human activities. The meteorological conditions on the day of fire occurrences were the second important driving factors to forest fires in dry season, while the fuel moisture and temperature conditions were the second important driving factors to forest fires in wet season. The Fire Weather Index (FWI) system had good applicability in the Southwest China and had a significant impact on the occurrence of forest fires in both the wet and dry seasons, therefore it was necessary to consider the FWI system index in forest fire prediction/forecast in the region.