With the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry, the consumption of four typical new energy minerals, including copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium, has led to the rapid growth. The demand of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium will remain strong in the future. However, the contradiction between supply and demand of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium is more prominent. With the increasingly intense competition among major countries, the geopolitical influence on new energy minerals are continuously enhanced. The study on the exploration progress of new energy minerals of overseas has important significance to deepening the basic geological research of new energy minerals, to optimize the layout of China’s global new energy mineral industry chain, and is conducive to Chinese enterprises to carry out mining investment in overseas. Based on the study of the overall situation, distribution characteristics of new discovered important deposits and the exploration progress of main countries & regions, important deposits, the main deposits types & metallogenic belts of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium in overseas over the past 20 years. The results show that: ① The net increases in reserves and resources of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium in overseas over the past 20 years are more than 1 times, especially the lithium is more than 2 times, but the net increases are highly concentrated in a few countries. ② Porphyry copper deposits, laterite nickel deposits, sandstone-shale-hosted copper (cobalt) deposits and brine type lithium deposits are the deposit types that contribute the most to the exploration progress of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium respectively. ③ The Circum-Pacific copper-polymetallic metallogenic belt, Southeast Asian nickel metallogenic belt, Central African copper-cobalt metallogenic belt and South American lithium triangle lithium metallogenic belt are the metallogenic belts with the greatest contribution to the exploration progress of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium, respectively. ④ Large international mining companies have the most of the increases in reserves and resources of exploration progress of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium in overseas over the past 20 years.⑤ Some newly-emerging countries of new energy minerals are formed over the past 20 years. In the future, China should optimization the strategic layout of the whole industrial chain of overseas new energy mineral mining, and the emerging new mineral countries can be new fulcrums.