[Objective] The characteristics, driving forces and existing problems in urban land expansion of Akesu City, Xijang Wei Autonomous Region are discussed, which provides a basis for the development and construction of this Oasis City.[Methods] With the Landsat TM/ETM⁺ satellite remote sensing images in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2015 as data sources and using ENVI supervised classification, we extracted data on urban land, arable land, forest land, water body, unused land and other land used for four periods in Akesu City. We then analyzed the changes in urban land in Aksu by the index of expansion strength, velocity, center of gravity coordinate transfer, compact degree and elastic coefficient.[Results] In 1990, the area of urban land was 18.34 km², and the total area of urban land in 2015 was 91.61 km². The expanded area in 25 years was 73.24 km², and the net increase was four times of that in 1990. The expaned urban land was mainly from unused land and arable land, with an area of 43.84 km² and 28.04 km² respectively; The barycentric coordinates of urban land moved to EN, SW and SW, similar to traffic route change. From 1990 to 2000, the barycentric coordinates moved with a distance of 243.7 m. Yet they moved 832.2 m from 2000 to 2010, and 1 568.2 m from 2010 to 2015. The urban land expanded with a planar and ribbon shape, and the density of the perimeter of the urban land has been declining from 0.201 in 1990 to 0.066 in 2015, and the urban space was increasingly complex.[Conclusion] The urban land of Aksu City expanded continuously and rapidly from 1990 to 2015. The urban land expansion rate during the study period was higher than the rate of population growth, with an expanding gap between them. The elastic coefficient was 2.3 in 1990 to 2000 and 10.13 in 2010 to 2015, so the urban expansion and population growth were not reasonable. The non-agricultural population, economic development, policy, and traffic factors in Aksu City are the main driving forces of land use change.