Writing is undoubtedly an important skill used to convey ideas in academic settings. In educational institutions, students are often required to produce various types of written assignments also known as academic writing. Due to its importance in education, many universities have exerted considerable effort to teach and improve students’ academic writing skills. However, many students find writing academic papers in English to be challenging. This notion has been proven by many previous studies investigating the academic writing challenges encountered by students from various educational levels. Hence, this study is conducted to explore the academic writing challenges encountered by Indonesian tertiarylevel education students through a review of existing literature. This study is conducted using a qualitative approach, utilizing a systematic literature review as the research method. Fifteen research articles are used to collect the data. These articles were chosen using various search engines such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and SemanticScholar. Based on the fifteen articles that had been investigated by the researchers, it is found that the students in tertiary level education in Indonesia encountered challenges in English academic writing in various aspects, such as grammar, organization, content, vocabulary, mechanics, citation, and paraphrasing. The majority of articles agreed that grammar is the biggest challenge that the students of tertiary level education in Indonesia encountered in academic writing, followed by the organization of the writing. Ten out of fifteen articles mentioned the content of the writing and vocabulary selection as challenging parts of academic writing. Some articles also reported that students encountered challenges in the mechanics of writing, such as spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Students also struggled to provide correct citations and paraphrasing. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the students of tertiary-level education in Indonesia encountered challenges in various aspects of English academic writing.