AbstractSoliton is one of the key concepts that will support future optical communications with a capability for large‐capacity, longdistance transmission systems. In general, the propagation of soliton pulses in an optical fiber is described by the perturbed nonlinear Schrödinger equation (PNLSE). Without any perturbation, this equation is reduced to the canonical nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) and can be solved analytically. However, in an attempt to take into account a variety of perturbations such as higher‐order dispersion, nonlinear dispersion, shock effect, induced Raman scattering, dissipation, etc., it is no longer solvable in an analytical fashion.This paper proposes a useful method based on the finite‐element method to carry out systematically the evolutional analysis that includes these perturbations. This method can easily deal with cases with realistic perturbations. To confirm the validity of this approach, it is applied to solving unperturbed cases, and it is shown that the same results as those using other solution methods are o