Abstract Green development has attracted increasing attention by the international community. This paper uses a green development performance index (GDPI) based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the panel data of 41 regions (including 165 countries/sub-regions) to estimate the global patterns of green development performance and its influencing factors. The results show that: (1) the patterns of the global green development are extremely imbalanced. Developed regions/countries have been leading in green development since the 21th century, while most of the developing regions/countries’ GDPIs are relatively low and are following a descending path; (2) an U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) exists between GDPI and economic development level and the inflection point is 2424 US $; (3) GDPI is positively related to living altitude, energy structure, and integrated oil prices while negatively related to ecological carrying capacity; (4) the financial crisis occurred since the second half of 2007 has a negative influence on the global green development.