Mobile robot global path planning in a static environment is an important problem. The paper proposes a method of global path planning based on neural network and genetic algorithm. We constructed the neural network model of environmental information in the workspace for a robot and used this model to establish the relationship between a collision avoidance path and the output of the model. Then the two-dimensional coding for the path via-points was converted to one-dimensional one and the fitness of both the collision avoidance path and the shortest distance are integrated into a fitness function. The simulation results showed that the proposed method is correct and effective.