All of the parrot species in this family are found in tropical and subtropical zones and inhabit Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean islands, sub-Saharan Africa, the island of Madagascar, the Arabian Peninsula, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania.

[3] The data place most of the diversification of psittaciformes around 40 Mya, after the separation of Australia from West Antarctica and South America.

[2][4] Divergence of the Psittacidae from the ancestral parrots resulted from a common radiation event from what was then West Antarctica into South America, then Africa, via late Cretaceous land bridges that survived through the Paleogene.

[6][7] The recently revised taxonomy of the family Psittacidae, based on molecular studies, recognizes the sister clade relationship of the Old World Psittacini and New World Arini tribes of subfamily Psittacinae,[8] which have been raised to subfamily ranking and renamed Psittacinae and Arinae.

The tree is based on the work by Leo Joseph and collaborators published in 2012 but with the choice of families and the number of species in each family taken from the list maintained by Frank Gill, Pamela Rasmussen and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee (IOC), now the International Ornithologists' Union.