Currently, TOEFL becomes a trend in the academic life. Of all types of TOEFL tests, listening is one of the skills that is always tested. Therefore, it is essential to identify the listening section’s challenges in TOEFL faced by non-native speakers, so that English teachers can pay attention to the challenges and formulate creative teaching strategies to improve them. This research applied explanatory mixed method. Quantitative method was used to answer which part is the most challenging in listening section of TOEFL, while qualitative method was used to answer what factors influencing the challenges based on the characteristics of the questions in each part. There were 30 students from English study program who engaged in this research, 50% form IAIN Palopo and 50% from STAIN Majene. They were selected by using convenience technique. The quantitative data were collected by using listening test of TOEFL and analysed by employing descriptive statistics which emphasized on central tendency. In contrast, qualitative data were collected by using unstructured interview and analysed by utilizing Miles and Huberman model. The results showed that the students from both universities encountered similar challenges. The most challenging part of the TOEFL listening test was the part A which is short conversation; the second was the part C, long talks, and the easiest one was the part B, long conversation. One of the factors that makes part A difficult is the type of question in the form of restatement.