Firstly, advances in investigation and evaluation of groundwater pollution in China in the last decade were presented, and several issues in the field which hinder the development of groundwater environment were pointed out. Then, four key concepts in risk assessment of groundwater pollution were briefly described with more emphasis on the difference between groundwater pollution assessment and groundwater quality assessment in this paper. After that, a method on risk assessment of groundwater pollution which included four indicators, the pollution assessment, the quality assessment, the vulnerability and the pollution load of groundwater, was presented based on the regional characteristics of Beijing Plain. Also, AHP and expert scoring method were applied to determine the weight of the four evaluation factors. Finally, the application of this method in Beijing Plain showed the area with high, relative high, medium, relative low and low risk of groundwater contamination was 1 232.1 km2, 699.3 km2, 1 951.4 km, 2 644 km2, and 133.2 km2, respectively. The study results showed that the higher risk in the western region was likely caused by the higher pollution load and its higher vulnerability, while the relatively high risk in the southeast of Beijing plain area, the Tongzhou District, is mainly caused by historical pollution sources.