Noctuidae is known to have high species diversity, although the genomic diversity of Noctuidae species has yet to be studied extensively. Investigation of transposable elements (TEs) in this family can improve our understanding of the genomic diversity of Noctuidae. In this study, we annotated and characterized genome-wide TEs in ten noctuid species belonging to seven genera. With multiple annotation pipelines, we constructed a consensus sequence library containing 1038–2826 TE consensus. The genome content of TEs showed high variation in the ten Noctuidae genomes, ranging from 11.3% to 45.0%. The relatedness analysis indicated that the TE content, especially the content of LINEs and DNA transposons, is positively correlated with the genome size (r = 0.86,p-value = 0.001). We identified SINE/B2as a lineage-specific subfamily inTrichoplusia ni,a species-specific expansion of the LTR/Gypsysubfamily inSpodoptera exigua, and a recent expansion of SINE/5Ssubfamily inBusseola fusca.We further revealed that of the four TE classes, only LINEs showed phylogenetic signals with high confidence. We also examined how the expansion of TEs contributed to the evolution of noctuid genomes. Moreover, we identified 56 horizontal transfer TE (HTT) events among the ten noctuid species and at least three HTT events between the nine Noctuidae species and 11 non-noctuid arthropods. One of the HTT events of aGypsytransposon might have caused the recent expansion of theGypsysubfamily in theS. exiguagenome. By determining the TE content, dynamics, and HTT events in the Noctuidae genomes, our study emphasized that TE activities and HTT events substantially impacted the Noctuidae genome evolution.