Abstract: Traditional villages are important carriers of Chinese culture. This paper analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics of 777 national-level traditional villages in Yunnan Province by using the methods of nearest neighbor index, geographical concentration index, imbalance index and kernel density, and combining with ArcGIS10.8. The results show as follows: 1) Traditional villages in Yunnan Province are distributed coherently. 2) At the municipal level, traditional villages are dispersed, while at the county level, they are concentrated. No matter in the county or city area, the traditional villages have an uneven distribution. 3) There are three major high-density agglomeration areas located in Northwest Yunnan, West Yunnan, and South Yunnan respectively. Through the method of geographical probe, it is found that the physical geographical environment and social and economic environment factors alternately affect the spatial differentiation of traditional villages, and the physical geographical environment factors have a greater influence, especially the topographic factors. In terms of socioeconomic environment, the distance to the nearest city centre and the density of the road network also has a significant impact. Finally, the following protection and management strategies are put forward: 1) Combine local ethnic characteristics to create regional traditional village name cards; 2) According to local conditions, centralized continuous protection and utilization; 3) Paying attention to the influence of terrain and traffic; 4) Integration of protection and development; 5) Establishing benefit-sharing mechanism.