The present invention discloses an apparatus and method for adaptive dispersion compensation, the apparatus comprising: a coarse-grain tunable dispersion compensator, a receiver with electric adaptive dispersion compensator, and a control logic unit. In the method, firstly it is to perform optical dispersion compensation for the input optical signals; then to perform electric dispersion compensation for the optical signals for which the optical dispersion compensation is performed; it is to detect the performance parameters of the receiving of the optical signals for which the electric dispersion compensation has been performed, and based on the performance parameters, it is to perform optical dispersion compensation adjustment for said input optical signals. With an optical de-multiplexer further, said apparatus can perform adaptive dispersion compensation for the multi-channel system. By using the apparatus and method for adaptive dispersion compensation of the present invention, it significantly reduces the number of adjustments as well as decreases the dispersion compensation time and can fast and accurately realize a wide range of adaptive dispersion compensation for either single channel or multi-channel.