<p>As populations continue to grow and building stock continues to rise, the energy consumption and carbon footprint of cities are expanding, exacerbating the critical situation of global climate change. It is necessary to analyze the research progress and development trends of urban building energy consumption. On the basis of the analysis software CiteSpace, a detailed review of the literature on building energy consumption at the urban scale in the Web of Science database is provided in this paper to understand the research hotspots, trends and frontiers for building energy consumption at the urban scale and further clarify the research progress of previous studies. The results revealed that research on urban building energy consumption focuses on nine main aspects: building blocks, urban climate, machine learning, life cycle assessment, energy policy, occupant behavior, building energy simulation, data-driven approaches and urban morphology. There are certain relationships among different topics, and the degree of interdisciplinarity is strong. With respect to development over time, the trend in this field generally shifts from quantitative research on demand to the establishment and simulation of urban building energy models and then to energy consumption management from the perspective of different influencing factors. Additionally, research methods have shifted from physics-based methods to data-driven approaches. Research on urban building energy consumption modeling (UBEM) remains a popular topic in this field.</p>