AlGaN/GaN lateral Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) with the nonrecessed and recessed floating metal rings (FMR) structure are fabricated and electrically characterized to study the influence of recessed FMR structure. The recessed FMR SBDs (RFMR‐SBDs) exhibit the lower onset voltage (V ON) and higher forward current (I F) at the anode of 3 V than the nonrecessed FMR SBDs (FMR‐SBDs). More importantly, the breakdown voltage (V BR) of the RFMR‐SBDs is 1980 V, which has a significant improvement compared with the FMR‐SBDs of 1540 V. However, the specific on‐resistance of the RFMR‐SBDs is higher than FMR‐SBDs. Furthermore, the electric field distributions of different structures are simulated by Silvaco software to analyze the mechanism of improving breakdown voltage. The results show that the breakdown voltage improvement is due to the broader depletion region in the RFMR‐SBDs at the breakdown voltage. Moreover, the electric field distributions of the RFMR‐SBDs and FMR‐SBDs with three FMRs are discussed further.