The invention provides a rocket soft landing guidance method, and belongs to the technical field of carrier rocket control. According to the method, an engine starting instruction is obtained through a self-adaptive engine starting method, a good initial access condition is created for the landing process after the engine is started, a rocket power soft landing section online track planning equation is established according to a rocket landing flight state, and a nominal track with the strongest deviation adaptability in a subsequent flight process can be planned in a real-time online rolling manner; through a guidance tracking method, a rocket can be guided to the nominal track generated in real time, and influence of interference in rocket landing process is greatly reduced; in addition, an engine shutdown condition is determined through a small-step-length prediction shutdown method, and the landing precision of the rocket is further improved.