The evolution and propagation characteristics of droughts are studied to provide help and advice for disaster mitigation and drought prevention in river basins. Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and standardized soil moisture index (SSMI) were adopted to characterize the meteorological drought and agricultural drought in the Haihe River Basin respectively. The trend and frequency analysis were also combined to study the spatio-temporal evolution and propagation characteristics of the droughts in this basin from 1980 to 2019. The results show that in terms of the frequency of droughts, the high-prone areas of the meteorological drought and agricultural drought were concentrated in the northeast and middle of the basin respectively. Meanwhile, the spatial distribution of different seasons was also significantly differentiated. Among them, spring and summer were the seasons with frequent meteorological droughts, whereas winter and spring were the seasons with frequent agricultural droughts. From the perspective of changing trends, the SPEI declined in the middle and eastern parts of the basin, which showed the most significant decrease in spring; however, the SSMI showed a pattern of “increasing in the north but decreasing in the south” with the most significant decline in autumn. There was a phenomenon of hysteresis in the response of the agricultural drought to meteorological drought, which varied from season to season. The propagation only took 5 months in summer, but 6 months, 9 months and 11 months in autumn, winter and spring, respectively. In terms of spatial distribution, the correlation coefficient in spring and summer was lower compared with other reasons, which mainly distributed in the north of the basin, but higher in autumn and winter, which mainly concentrated in the middle of the basin.