Abstract A high‐gain circular polarization (CP) beam scanning antenna based on planar transmit array (TA) is proposed. The planar TA is implemented using rectangular patches and square rings, and it has different frequency responses to two orthogonal polarized incident waves owing to different phase distributions in x ‐ and y ‐direction. The TA can convert a linearly polarized spherical incident wave into a circularly polarized transmitted plane wave. In addition, beam scanning is achieved by in‐plane translation of the feed antenna. The procedure is demonstrated for high‐gain beam steering implementation operating in CP at the Ku‐band. Full‐wave simulation results demonstrate that the designed antenna enables elevation beam scanning from −33.6° to +33.6°, with a peak gain of 26.4 dBi. Scanning loss is better than 5 dB and the axis ratio remains below 3 dB for the entire scanning range in the frequency band of 13.9–14.9 GHz. Moreover, a prototype is fabricated and the measured results have good agreement with the simulated results, which confirms the feasibility of using this technology to achieve a high‐gain, CP, low‐cost and low cross‐polarization beam scanning antenna.