Lake Erhai, a significant freshwater lake located in the subtropical plateau of southwest China (Yunnan), has experienced water quality degradation and eutrophication under the influence of intensive human activities and recent climate change, especially in the northern zone of the lake. In this study, rotifer communities and environmental factors were seasonally investigated in 2020 at five sites in the northern zone of the lake. The seasonal succession of the rotifer communities and the associated environmental factors were explored by multivariate analyses. A total of 48 rotifer species from 26 genera were identified in this investigation, most of which were cosmopolitan or warm-water species. Ascomorpha, Asplanchna, Collotheca, Euchlanis, Keratella and Polyarthra appeared in all the investigated seasons. Trichocerca was the genus contributing the most species, including nine species. K. cochlearis, P. dolichoptera and A. priodonta were the dominant species. In the investigated seasons, K. cochlearis was the first dominant species in abundance, and A. priodonta was the first dominant species in biomass. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis (NMDS) showed a significant seasonal difference in the community structure of rotifers in the northern zone of the lake. The significant seasonal difference of rotifer communities mainly reflected the direct and indirect effects of temperature, among which the indirect effects mainly included the seasonality of fish predation pressure and food resource. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that temperature, transparency and phytoplankton abundance were the important variables explaining the community variation and the seasonal succession of rotifers. Both seasonality and species composition of rotifer communities indicate the sensitivity of abundant species to the change of water quality and water temperature.