The invention provides a processing method and a processing apparatus for an unknown multicast message. In the invention, by means of configuring a second type multicast forwarding table entry for indicating forwarding of the unknown multicast message in advance, a network device can be guaranteed to directly forward the unknown multicast message based on the second type multicast forwarding table entry without receiving the unknown multicast message, and impact to a CPU caused by sending the multicast message received every time up to the CPU in the prior art is avoided.