In the last 50 years, large changes in the runoff processes of the Luanhe River Basin have exacerbated the scarcity and spatiotemporal variability of water resources. It is both theoretically and practically important to study the characteristics, trends and periods of runoff changes in the Luanhe River Basin. In this study, the moving average method, the Mann-Kendall test and wavelet analysis are applied to analyze the evolution of the natural runoff of the Luanhe River using runoff data for 1959-2018 at the representative stations in the Luanhe River Basin, namely, the Goutaizi, Sandaohezi and Luan County stations. The results show that the runoff volumes at the three stations decreased for 1959-2018, including abrupt decreases at the Goutaizi station in 1969 and at the Sandaohezi station in 1976. The Luan County station exhibited a significant increase in runoff after 1997. The significant periods of variation in the runoff for the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Luanhe River are 28 years, 27 years and 30 years, respectively.