In their cladistic analysis of the newly described taxa Bannykus and Xiyunykus, Xu et al. (2018) recovered Tugulusaurus as a member of Alvarezsauria.
Xu et al. (2018) used a cladistic approach to analyze the taxonomic relationships of Bannykus and Xiyunykus, concluding that Tugulusaurus is part of the Alvarezsauria lineage.