The invention discloses an underwater vehicle path planning method based on ocean current historical statistic information, comprising the following steps of: determining a sailing region, rasterizing the sailing region, generating an ocean current field in the sailing region by an ocean current historical statistic database, taking an electronic chart as an environment field to simplify and combine obstacles, islands and phytal zones in the sailing region and generate a prohibited area, storing ocean current information and prohibited area information according to grids, creating a path evaluation function, searching for an optimal path by a particle swarm optimization algorithm, outputting the optimal path and ending the path planning process. In the method provided by the invention, the ocean current field closer to a true value is generated by the ocean current historical statistic database, under the condition of taking full account of ocean current influence, the path evaluation function is designed based on safety, economical efficiency and smoothness, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used as a path searching algorithm to perform global path planning for the underwater vehicle so as to plan an underwater vehicle sailing path which is closer to a practical sailing path.