A crop drought process generally consists of meteorological and agricultural drought periods. The temporal-spatial characteristics of meteorological and agricultural droughts during the summer maize (Zea mays L.) drought process from 2000 to 2020 in the Huang-Huai-Hai (HHH) region in China were investigated by using 10-day Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI10) and Vegetation Water Index (VWI) in this study. Variations of meteorological and agricultural droughts for summer maize were basically the same in terms of severity, frequency, extent, and centroid of drought in HHH from 2000 to 2020. Nevertheless, the spatial patterns of extents, high-frequency occurrences, and centroid migration for mild, moderate, and severe meteorological drought may not completely align with those for agricultural drought of the corresponding severity levels. Results indicated that agricultural drought severity was related to the stage in which the meteorological drought occurred. Spatially, drought frequency (>30 %) clustered in western Henan, eastern Shandong, and the northern HHH, with meteorological drought extents consistently exceeding agricultural drought. Three-dimensional drought-day structures revealed agricultural drought persistence while shorter meteorological drought durations, emphasizing recovery lag. The zonal variations of meteorological and agricultural drought centroids were respectively driven by the sea surface temperature (contribution of 58.39 %) and the mid-high latitude atmospheric circulation (contribution of 58.39 %), and the meridional variations of meteorological and agricultural drought centroids were respectively driven by mid-low latitude atmospheric circulation (contribution of 38.44 %) and sea surface temperature (contribution of 52.73 %). Different climatic drivers of the two types of droughts jointly shaped the same migration direction, resulting in consistency in the migration (slightly moving towards the southwest during 2000–2020) of the two types of drought events, with annual longitude variation of −0.05° and − 0.007°, and latitude variation of −0.02° and − 0.01° for meteorological and agricultural droughts, respectively. The results of this study will be valuable for instituting effective measures for monitoring and preventing summer maize drought.