With the development of policies to protect canal culture, grand canal has gradually received extensive attention from scholars. The development of grand canal is subject to many changes due to the influence of cultural policies. There is an urgent need for a dynamic and developmental perspective to explore the protection and development strategies of the canal heritage to gain a comprehensive and objective understanding of the research trends in contemporary society in grand canal’s cultural heritage field. In this study, with the help of CiteSpace and VOSviewer software, we visualize and analyze the literature related to grand canal in CNKI and Web of Science database from 2010 to 2023 and analyze and extrapolate the number of publications and hot topics based on research-based literature. The results show that the number of research literature on canals at home and abroad is on the rise, of which domestic canals are mainly centered on cultural heritage, culture, and tourism integration, etc.; foreign countries mainly focus on research on canal control algorithms and technologies, canal water quality pollution prevention and control technologies, etc.