The invention belongs to the technical field of electrical equipment monitoring and relates to a monitoring method and a monitoring system for an overheat fault of a transformer. The technical problems that traditional monitoring methods and monitoring systems in the prior art are not reasonable enough and the like are solved by the invention. The monitoring system comprises the following steps: A, thermal image acquisition; B, image recognition processing; and C, fault diagnosis and processing. The monitoring method and the monitoring system for the overheat fault of the transformer have the advantages that acquired image information is recognized by adopting a non-contact monitoring mode to realize fast recognition and diagnose of the part, the degree the type of the early potential fault of the transformer. The monitoring method and the monitoring system for the overheat fault of the transformer have the characteristics that the safety, the reliability and the efficiency are high. Meanwhile, by utilizing the non-contact monitoring mode, a condition is provided for realizing all-weather state monitoring on the transformer on the premise that the operation of the transformer is not influenced, and therefore, the safe, stable and reliable operation of equipment is ensured, the maintenance level of the transformer is comprehensively promoted, and the maintenance cost is reduced. The system is reasonable in design, simple in structure, good in working stability and high in fault detection rate.