The Physical Education Department at Beijing Foreign Studies University, as a functional department for school sports, has gradually evolved from the sports-teaching group in the early days of the university. It was renamed the Physical Education Department in 1999 and officially upgraded to the department level in 2025. It fully undertakes work such as the teaching of school sports, public sports activities, sports team training and competitions and physical fitness testing.

Starting from the teaching philosophy of "people-oriented, health first and good personality", the department, in conjunction with the university's internationalization and based on comprehensive promotion of swimming, has created three categories — Olympic competition, leisure sports and traditional national sports — comprising more than 20 undergraduate courses. It also offers a university-wide health liberal course and graduate sports optional courses.

In 2020, the course "Sports, Exercise, Competition and the Development of College Students' Physical and Mental Health" was approved as one of the first national first-class undergraduate courses. In 2021, it won the University-level Outstanding Teaching Achievement Award.

Additionally, it has established over 10 university-level student sports teams and one high-level swimming team and has been chosen by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission as an outstanding institution for public sports. In 2023, it was awarded the title of "an advanced unit during the 31st FISU Summer World University Games" by the Ministry of Education and the General Administration of Sport of China.

A high-level faculty team forms the backbone of the university's sports work. As of 2025, the department has a total of 20 full-time faculty members, including 18 full-time teachers, among whom are two professors, nine associate professors, and seven lecturers. The teacher team includes three members with doctoral degrees, 10 with master's degrees, and one doctoral candidate. Rounding off the squad are an Olympic champion, three masters of sports, one international referee, and two national-level referees.

In recent years, the department has promoted disciplinary developmental work to support talent training at the university with three teachers having visited abroad for academic exchanges. It organized multiple academic conferences and lectures, led one project under the humanities and social sciences planning of the Ministry of Education, and took charge of over 20 university-level teaching and research projects. The department published nearly 10 monographs and textbooks as well as over 100 papers in domestic and foreign professional journals and conferences.