The year 1518 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.

• May 26 – A Transit of Venus occurs.

• May 1 – Juan de Grijalva arrives at the Tabasco region of Mexico.^[1]
• Martín Fernández de Enciso publishes his Suma de Geographia in Castile, a summary of world geography incorporating the latest discoveries in the New World.^{[dubious – discuss]}

• Henricus Grammateus publishes Ayn neu Kunstlich Buech in Vienna, containing the earliest printed use of plus and minus signs for arithmetic.^[2] He also publishes Libellus de compositione regularum pro vasorum mensuratione. Deque arte ista tota theoreticae et practicae and a new musical temperament.^[3]
• Adam Ries publishes Rechnung auff der linihen, describing the use of a calculating board, a kind of two-dimensional abacus, for practical arithmetic.^[1]

• July – dancing plague, a case of dancing mania, breaks out in Strasbourg.^[4]
• September 23 – College of Physicians founded in London.^[5]
• Jacopo Berengario da Carpi publishes Tractatus de Fractura Calve sive Cranii in Bologna, the first monograph on neurosurgery.^[6]
• Publication of Antonio de Nebrija's Lexicon artis medicamentariae, "which contains the correspondence in vulgar language of the Greek and Latin names of the plants".^[7]

• July 3 - Li Shizhen, Chinese physician, pharmacologist and mineralogist (died 1593)