Abelisauroidea was named by Bonaparte (1991) [Reference cites Novas (1989) as source of name, but that is a PhD thesis, so cannot serve as origin for nomenclatural purposes.]. Its type is Abelisaurus. It was considered monophyletic by de Azevedo et al. (2013).

It was assigned to Theropoda by Carrano et al. (2002); to Abelisauria by Coria et al. (2002), Martínez et al. (2004); to Neoceratosauria by Rowe et al. (1997), Holtz (2000), Lamanna et al. (2002), Carrano et al. (2002), Tykoski and Rowe (2004), Tortosa et al. (2014); to Ceratosauria by Rauhut (2003), Yates (2005), Sampson and Witmer (2007), Krause et al. (2007), Carrano and Sampson (2008), Ezcurra et al. (2010), Novas et al. (2013), de Azevedo et al. (2013), Hendrickx and Mateus (2014), Gasparini et al. (2015), Gianechini et al. (2015), Zaher et al. (2020), Baiano et al. (2020), Delcourt and Iori (2020), Baiano et al. (2021), Giaretta et al. (2023), Agnolín et al. (2023); to Ceratosauria by Bonaparte (1991), Sereno et al. (1994), Sereno and Brusatte (2008), Cerroni et al. (2020), Aranciaga Rolando et al. (2021), Iori et al. (2021), Agnolín et al. (2021), Baiano et al. (2022), Juarez et al. (2023); and to Theropoda by Novas et al. (2008), Paulina-Carabajal et al. (2021), Agnolin et al. (2025).