The genus Paradisaea consists of six species of birds-of-paradise (family Paradisaeidae).

[2] A 2009 study examining the mitochondrial DNA of the family found that the Paradisaea birds-of-paradise were in a clade with the genus Cicinnurus.

It showed that the blue bird-of-paradise was a sister taxon to all the other species in this genus.

The genus Paradisaea was introduced by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[6] The type species was designated as the greater bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea apoda) by George Robert Gray in 1840.