Objective To study the risk factors of urinary incontinence in acute stroke patients and provide scientific evidence for preventing and managing such complication. Methods A computerized literature search was performed on both English and Chinese databases including Embase, Medline, Wanfang Data, VIP, and CNKI from January 1990 to January 2017 based on such search strategies as literature review and manual retrieval. In addition, we tracked down the related reference lists. The RevMan 5.3 software was used for Meta-analysis. Categorical data were calculated by the pooled odds ratio (OR) values and 95% confidence intervals (CI), and numerical data were calculated by pooled mean difference (MD) and 95%CI. Results A total of 17 articles of controlled studies with 2 428 cases and 3 725 controls were included. According to the results of Meta-analysis, factors associated with urinary incontinence following acute stroke were age [MD=2.80, 95%CI (0.29, 5.30),P=0.03], female gender [OR=1.29, 95%CI (1.16, 1.45),P<0.000 01], diabetes [OR=1.40, 95%CI (1.13, 1.73),P=0.002], heart disease [OR=1.65, 95%CI (1.29, 2.13),P<0.000 1), former cerebrovascular disease [OR=1.43, 95%CI (1.21, 1.69),P<0.000 1), speech disorder [OR=4.20, 95%CI (3.45, 5.10),P<0.000 01], smoking [OR=0.68, 95%CI (0.50, 0.92),P=0.01]. Hypertension [OR=1.25, 95%CI (0.99, 1.58),P=0.06], left hemisphere involvement [OR=1.29, 95%CI (0.81, 2.06),P=0.29], and hemorrhagic stroke [OR=1.26, 95%CI (0.79, 2.03),P=0.33] were not correlated with urinary incontinence following acute stroke. Conclusions Older age, female gender, diabetes, heart disease, former cerebrovascular disease and speech disorder are risk factors associated with post-stroke urinary incontinence, while smoking lowers the potential risk. However, hypertension, hemorrhagic stroke and left hemisphere involvement do not significantly increase the risk of urinary incontinence following stroke.