The invention discloses a formation control method for unmanned aerial vehicles. The method comprises a formation generation step. The formation generation method comprises the following step that allthe unmanned aerial vehicles carry out formation change at appointed time after receiving information of a target reference formation, wherein firstly, all the unmanned aerial vehicles fly towards target formation positions closest to the unmanned aerial vehicles under the guidance of approach operation, and meanwhile, all the members in the formation obtain the positions and speeds of other surrounding unmanned aerial vehicles on the basis of the communication of an on-board detection system or a local area network within a limited detection range and process and utilize the information; secondly, the unmanned aerial vehicles generate respective target formation positions under virtual allocation operation and fly towards the respective target formation positions; finally, the unmanned aerial vehicles determine final target formation positions under the guidance of self-adaptive adjustment operation and fly towards the final target formation positions, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle cluster forms the target reference formation. By means of the method, the unmanned aerial vehicle formation members can form any formation without knowing global information, asynchronous triggering can be achieved, collisions can be avoided, and the formation control can also be implemented by memory even if the current communication is interrupted for a short time.