The Yellow River Basin is the cradle of the Chinese nation, but is also named as the crisis of the Chinese nation for having more sand, hanging River, easy to silt and frequent flooding and drought disasters. In this study, taking the 8 times typical historical drought situation in the Yellow River Basin as the main information source from 1639 to 1980 (the year of 1639, 1877, 1928, 1929, 1960, 1965, 1972 and 1980), transferring the historical drought information to the 100mx100m spatial grid in the river basin, the eight typical historical drought situation were overlaid by using spatial analysis module in GIS software. Risk analysis results were classified into five grades: very high risk area, high risk area, middle risk area, low risk areas and risk free area. Then the drought risk assessment distribution map of the Yellow River Basin based on historical drought information was got. The drought risk assessment of the Yellow River Basin can provide a scientific base for better guidance to the regional agricultural production and exploring regional resources and environment sustainable development model.