Soybean is a key economic crop, and is an important source of plant protein and oil. In recent years, high temperature (HT) stress caused by global climate change has threatened the key growth period of soybean, and has become one of the main environmental factors which limited the yield and quality of soybean. In order to reveal the molecular mechanism, establish a comprehensive efficiency evaluation system and promoting genetic improvement of soybean resistance to HT stress, the physiological and biochemical basis and molecular regulation mechanism responding to HT stress of soybean were reviewed in this paper. Compared to optimum temperature, the thickness of leaves increased, the stomatal conductance decreased, the membrane permeability increased, cell microstructure and its integrity damaged, the osmoregulation substances (proline, soluble sugar and protein) changed and the key enzyme activities of the antioxidant defense system in soybean have been lost under HT stress, these results will lead to disorders of a series of physiological processes in soybean, which include the photosynthesis, transpiration, respiration and substance content, etc. Besides, HT stress also caused the abnormalities of pollen morphology, the tapetum cytoplasm is not dense, showing vacuolated and autolysis, the pollen vigour and germination rate are significantly decreased, and pollen abortion rate increased, thus resulting in the pod-set rate and seed-set percentage remarkable decrease, and affecting the normal development and protein accumulation of seed and yield formation of soybean, and ultimately leading to lower yields of soybean. Meanwhile, HT stress can also cause some damage to quality traits of seed, and then has an adverse effect on its economic value of soybean. Moreover, normal physiological metabolism is widely affected by HT stress at the level of transcription, translation and metabolism. At present, many transcription factors, proteins and metabolites response to HT stress in soybean have been identified by the method of high-throughput sequencing, however, there is still a wide gap compared with research on rice and Arabidopsis. Currently, the comprehensive stress response indexes based on pollen viability and several physiological parameters have been used to screen HT resistance soybean varieties, but, the method of system identification is still imperfect in soybean production, and thus leading to the slow progress in selection of HT resistant soybean. Up to date, challenges are still existed in preventive measures, the establishment of a comprehensive evaluation system, screening for excellent soybean germplasm related to resistance to HT, and identification of key functional genes resistance to HT stress in soybean. The adverse effects of extreme ecological environment on soybean production will be further aggravated with the uncertainty of global climate change. In the future, the main focuses should be put on the establishment of a comprehensive evaluation technology system, improvement of the identification level of soybean germplasm resources, elucidation of molecular genetic mechanism and excavation of key genes resistance to HT in soybean. Selecting new soybean varieties with resistance to HT stress by both of the conventional breeding and molecular breeding technologies, thus will provide a theoretical basis and technical support for achieving the unification of HT resistance as well as high yield and quality in soybean.