As global communication has become increasingly multicultural, there is an urgent need to understand cultural values as they are represented in textbooks for English language learners (ELLs) as well as to acknowledge these textbooks as cultural artifacts. During the last ten years, a plethora of studies have been carried out to investigate the cultural portrayals found within ELT textbooks. However, comprehensive research review of this issue has received scanty attention. To fill this void, this current study systematically reviewed the academic published literature on cultural representation in ELT textbooks from 2014 to 2023. This systematic literature review intended to identify prevailing research trends and key findings of the reviewed studies during this time frame. For this purpose, after applying the inclusive and exclusive criteria and full-text analysis, a total of 49 published articles in Scopus-indexed journals were reviewed and analyzed. By following the PRISMA (Moher et al., 2009) guidelines and thematic content analysis (Patton, 2015), we captured the research trends of the study and discussed the key findings. The highest percentage of published articles (n=10 or 20.4%) was recorded in 2022, and the most frequently employed study design was content analysis (n=22 or 44.89%). We also found that there was a significant imbalance in cultural representation found in both locally developed and internally distributed textbooks. Limitations and various recommendations are made for future research on the basis of the review.