This paper is concerned with the exponential stability analysis of linear delay difference systems. Firstly, a set of weighted discrete orthogonal polynomials (WDOPs) is established by using the Gram‐Schmidt orthogonalization process, and then two WDOPs‐based summation inequalities, including some existing summation inequalities as special cases, are developed. Secondly, these WDOPs‐based summation inequalities are applied to investigate the exponential stability criteria and explicit exponential estimates of solutions of linear delay difference systems. Finally, two numerical examples indicate that the proposed WDOPs‐based approach can derive the exponential stability condition with larger decay rate than the existing ones.