AbstractNear‐field wave propagation of the fluid‐saturated porous media (FSPM) is an important issue in soil dynamics and geotechnical earthquake engineering. In the current study, a fully explicit staggered algorithm for the near‐field wave propagation analysis of the FSPM in the time domain is developed based on the u‐p dynamic formulation. The decoupling of dynamic formulation is implemented by the diagonalization of the mass matrix and pore fluid compressibility matrix. The central difference method and Newmark constant average acceleration method are used for the solution of the displacement and velocity of solid skeleton, and the backward difference method is used for the solution of pore fluid pressure in the time domain. The effectiveness and feasibility of the matrix diagonalization are verified by the comparison with the classical numerical algorithm. The proposed algorithm is also validated by the comparison of the numerical results with the corresponding analytical solution results. Combing with the transmitting artificial boundary condition, the proposed algorithm is then applied to investigate the seismic response of a FSPM free field, and its applicability to the typical near‐field wave propagation problems of the FSPM is indicated. The stability analysis of the proposed algorithm is finally conducted, and the corresponding stability criterion is presented. For the proposed algorithm, all the dynamic variables of the FSPM are solved in an iterative way and the coupling dynamic equations need not to be solved at each time step. The computational effort can be reduced considerably, and the computational efficiency can be improved remarkably.