Summary Stress relaxation behaviour of high acyl gellan gels has been investigated, and data were fitted successfully by a seven elements empirical model and a four term modified Maxwell model with three fixed relaxation times (20, 200 and 2000 s). In addition, the effect of testing parameters on stress relaxation characteristics and the relationship between those characteristics and intrinsic gel properties were studied. High acyl gellan gels were tested in stress relaxation with different cross‐head speeds (0.1–10 mm s−1) to applied strains (3–30%). The results showed that the cross‐head speed had little effect on stress relaxation behaviour of gels. With increasing the applied strain, the initial stress and the equilibrium stress increased. The equilibrium stresses from relaxation measurement were positively related to the hardness from TPA tests (R2 = 0.991). Relaxation appeared to be associated with the shifting of cross‐links in the gel matrix.