Numerous mathematical models simulating the phenomenon in science and engineering use delay differential equations. In this paper, we focus on the semilinear delay differential equations, which include a wide range of mathematical models with time lags, such as reaction-diffusion equation with delay, model of bacteriophage predation on bacteria in a chemostat, and so on. This paper is concerned with the stability and convergence properties of exponential Runge–Kutta methods for semilinear delay differential equations. GDN-stability and D-convergence of exponential Runge–Kutta methods are investigated. These two concepts are generalizations of the classical AN-stability and B-convergence for ordinary differential equations to delay differential equations. Sufficient conditions for GDN-stability are given by a newly introduced concept of strong exponential algebraic stability. Further, with the aid of diagonal stability, we show that exponential Runge–Kutta methods are D-convergent. The D-convergent orders are also examined. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.