Purpose: This paper aims to present a comprehensive review of the present state and trends of smart education research. It addresses the need to have a systematic review of smart education to depict its research landscape in view of the growing volume of related publications. Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric analysis of publications on smart education published in 2011 to 2020 was conducted, covering their patterns and trends in terms of collaboration, key publications, major topics and trends. A total of 1,317 publications with 29,317 cited references were collected from the Web of Science and Scopus for the bibliometric analysis. Findings: Research on smart education has been widely published in various sources. The most frequently cited references are all theoretical or discussion articles. Researchers in the USA, China, South Korea, India and Russia have been most active in research collaborations. However, international collaborations have remained infrequent except for those involving the USA. The research on smart education broadly covered smart technologies as well as teaching and learning. The emerging topics have addressed areas such as the Internet of Things, big data, flipped learning and gamification. Originality/value: This study depicts the intellectual landscape of smart education research, and illustrated the evolution and emerging trends in the field. The results highlight its latest developments and research needs, and suggest future work related to research collaborations on a larger scale and more studies on smart pedagogies.