The embodiments of the present invention disclose a method and an apparatus for detecting signals of a MIMO system, and relate to a MIMO technology. The method includes: performing triangular decomposition on a channel matrix of the MIMO system, and decomposing the MIMO system into multiple MIMO subsystems; detecting the receiving signal vector of the first MIMO subsystem, and obtaining the candidate detection vector list of the first MIMO subsystem; detecting remaining MIMO subsystems consecutively in a SIC mode, and generating candidate detection vector lists of the remaining MIMO subsystems; and combining all the lists, and marking decision or performing calculation to obtain the transmitting signal vector of the MIMO system.