The phenotypic and genetic diversity of 68 cultivars of foxtail millet with tillering from abroad and domestic were analyzed in this study. The analysis of phenotype showed that the majority of qualitative traits such as sheath colour, grain colour, hull colour, panicle type and the density of spikelet were green, white, yellow, conic and loose, respectively. The coefficient of variation of the grain percentage was the smallest and other traits showed abundant genetic variation. The XIAO RUAN GU from Shanxi was of the highest values for the panicle weight of single plant, grain weight of single plant and weight of thousand-grain, but the DA QING GU from Heilongjiang was of the lowest values for the grain weight of single plant, grain percentage and weight of thousand-grain. Simultaneously, Genetic diversity analysis of 68 foxtail millet germplasm with tillering were conducted using 77 pairs of SNP and SSR primers distributed across the millet genome. A total of 202 alleles with an average of 2.62 per pairs of primers, and 1?6 alleles per locus were detected. PIC varied greatly from 0.0283 to 0.6974 with an average of 0.4169. The genetic similarity coefficient varied from 0.59 to 0.96 with an average of 0.68. The clustering results based on UPGMA method showed that the tested materials could be divided into four groups named as TGI、TGII、TGIII and TGIV, respectively. TGI and TGII were come mainly from Northwest of China and foreign country, respectively. However, TGIII were come from North, East, Northeast of China and the TGIV included only one material. A total of 10 millet germplasm with tillering were identified according to phenotype. All above revealed that the genetic diversity of 68 germplasm were good. These results would provide a theoretical basis for breeding and mining the good genes for tillering.