The Richards equation is a key governing equation for modeling soil water movement in soil physics. However, most researchers engaged in soil physics research in China have relatively weak mathematical and physical foundations, which poses considerable challenges to achieving breakthroughs in the numerical simulation of soil physical processes. Currently, in the Chinese literature, studies focusing on the numerical solution of the two-dimensional Richards equation using the finite element method are primarily conducted by researchers with a mathematical background. In the era of artificial intelligence, AI tools can lower the threshold for researchers with weak mathematical foundations to understand such mathematically oriented papers. Nevertheless, due to the strong theoretical nature of these papers and the absence of supporting source code, researchers in this group still need to invest substantial effort to independently learn and master finite element programming for solving the two-dimensional Richards equation.Therefore, starting from the practical needs of researchers with limited mathematical backgrounds, this paper presents a programming framework with detailed derivation procedures and corresponding code for solving the two-dimensional Richards equation using the finite element method. The core of this framework is to transform the nonlinear partial differential equation into a system of nonlinear algebraic equations through mathematical approaches including Green’s theorem, Jacobian transformation, and Gaussian numerical integration. The Newton-Raphson method is then adopted, combined with the diagonal normalization method for imposing boundary conditions, to finally accomplish the solution of the nonlinear algebraic system. The numerical simulation code developed based on this framework has been effectively validated under two typical irrigation scenarios: subsurface pipe infiltration irrigation and surface drip irrigation. Specifically, under subsurface pipe infiltration irrigation, the simulation results were compared with field-measured data from single-point source infiltration experiments. Under surface drip irrigation, the simulated soil water movement processes were compared with computational results from the internationally widely used Hydrus software. In both scenarios, the positions of the simulated wetting fronts were in good agreement with the reference results, verifying the accuracy and applicability of the model. The programming framework and code provided in this paper can help researchers with weak mathematical foundations quickly get started with finite element numerical simulation of the two-dimensional Richards equation, and are expected to play a positive role in promoting future breakthroughs in the numerical simulation of soil physical processes in China.