The invention discloses a method for extracting microbial total RNA in forest soil and litter, which comprises the following steps: 1, carrying out freeze-drying on a forest soil or litter sample, grinding, and uniformly mixing; 2, adding pyrocarbonic acid diethyl ester treating water into the powdered sample, and standing over night at -70 DEG C; 3, adding glass beads, hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide buffer, lauryl sodium sulfate, diatomite and phenol / chloroform / isoamyl alcohol, and uniformly mixing; 4, severely shaking the mixed liquid, and centrifuging to obtain the supernate; 5, adding guanidinium isothiocyanate into the supernate, and centrifuging to obtain the supernate; 6, adding chloroform / isoamyl alcohol into the supernate, and centrifuging to obtain the supernate; 7, addingpolyethylene glycol 6000 into the supernate, standing, centrifuging, and removing the supernate; 8, washing, dissolving, and carrying out DNA enzyme digestion to obtain an RNA solution; and 9, detecting the integrality of the RNA through agarose gel electrophoresis, and using a nucleic acid protein determinator to detect the concentration and purity of the RNA. The RNA extracted by using the method has high yield, good integrality and better purity.