In order to determine the suitable soil moisture threshold for the main growth stages of cotton under mulched drip irrigation in northern Xinjiang, three soil moisture threshold intervals ((50%-80%) FC (FC is the field water capacity), (60%-90%) FC and (70%-100%) FC) were set up during the bud stage, flowering and boll stage, and boll blowing stage. An orthogonal experiment was conducted, and local farmers’ irrigation scheme was used as a control (CK) to quantitatively analyze the effect of soil moisture threshold on cotton growth indicators, water consumption and yield during each growth stage. The results showed that at (50%~80%) FC, cotton plant height, stem thickness, leaf area index (LAI) and above-ground dry matter accumulation of treatment W1 were significantly reduced by 26.8%, 22.0%, 37.1%, and 14.3% (p<0.05), respectively, and water consumption in the whole growth period was reduced by 37.2% compared with the treatment CK. The treatment W6 produced the highest number of bolls and seed cotton yield (6.41, 5 848.99 kg/hm2); W4 had the highest water use efficiency (1.28 kg/m3); W9 scored the highest weight of single bolls (5.41 g); W5 presented the highest cotton lint percentage (42.51%). The above indicators of individual treatments were increased by 10.9%, 10.1%, 21.9%, 1.5% and 3.1%, respectively, compared with CK treatment. The comprehensive evaluation results of entropy weight-TOPSIS indicates that W6 is the optimal treatment. It is suggested that the suitable soil moisture thresholds for the bud stage, boll stage and boll blowing stage of cotton under mulched drip irrigation in northern Xinjiang are (60%~90%) FC, (70%~100%) FC and (50%~80%) FC, respectively.