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Chemistry education has historically developed through a reductionist approach focused on molecular structures, formulas, and reaction mechanisms. Although this approach has made significant contributions to the production of scientific knowledge and technological advancement, it is not sufficient on its own to address complex problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, and sustainability. Therefore, chemistry education needs to be reconceptualized through a holistic approach that considers chemical processes in relation to social, economic, and environmental systems. In this context, systems thinking has emerged as an important approach for understanding the dynamic relationships among the components of complex structures, feedback loops, and the emergent properties of a system as a whole. Accordingly, it is important to transform chemistry curricula on the basis of systems thinking and to support students in developing systems thinking skills. The aim of this study is to examine the development, main trends, and research gaps in academic studies on systems thinking and related skills in the chemistry education literature through bibliometric analysis. Within this scope, the study was conducted in the Web of Science (WoS) database using the keywords (("systems thinking" OR "system thinking") AND ("skill" OR "skills") AND ("chemistry")), and 108 sources were retrieved. Studies outside the Education Educational Research category and book chapters were excluded from the dataset, and the analyses were conducted based on 76 articles. The study examined publication and citation trends by year, the productivity and collaboration levels of countries, and the shared citation network. The findings indicate a marked increase in the number of publications and citations after 2019, suggesting that systems thinking skills have become an emerging paradigm in chemistry education. Publication and collaboration analyses by country show that the USA, Canada, Israel, and England are the countries contributing most substantially to the field, whereas Turkey’s contribution remains relatively limited. Keyword analysis reveals that “systems thinking” is located at the conceptual center of the field and that this concept reflects the current direction of the field through its strong connections with “sustainability” and “green chemistry”. Co-citation analysis shows that the study by Orgill et al. (2019) is the most cited study in the field.1 In conclusion, systems thinking skills can be considered an emerging research area in chemistry education, and further studies are needed in this field.