Abstract: Hot dry rock is one kind of geothermal energy with great development potential. It refers to the rocks with a temperature higher than 180℃ and does not exist or only exists a small amount of fluid inside. Since the built of Fenton Hill project in the United States in 1970s, 41 hot dry rock (EGS) projects were constructed in 14 countries around the world. Based on the existence of hydrothermal reservoirs around or above the hot dry rock, the 41 projects can be divided into two types, 25 belong to traditional hot dry rock systems and 16 belong to enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). From the point of plate tectonic, these hot dry rock(EGS) projects are mainly distributed in the thermal realm of the Eurasian plate interior, the India-Australian plate interior, the divergence and convergent plate margin of the eastern Pacific Ocean, the convergent plate margin of the western Pacific Ocean, and the volcanic island arc area of the Caribbean Sea. From the point of basin type, craton basin, the foreland basin, the rift basin, the fore-arc basin/ back-arc basin, the modern volcanic (volcanic belt) and fold belt region are the main structural settings of the hot dry rock (EGS) projects. Among them, the foreland basin which represented by Molasse basin in the European Alps fold belt, and the rift basin which represented by Upper Rhine Graben in the European alpine fold belt and Nevada basin in the north American Cordillera orogenic belt are the two main basin type with a large number of hot dry rock (EGS) projects. Considering the distribution of China’s hot dry rock, the development experiences of the Upper Rhine Graben and the Nevada basin will be valuable for exploring and developing dry hot rock (EGS) in China.