Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for detecting a device-to-device signal, a user equipment, and a base station. The method includes: receiving a first message; determining, according to the first message, a first timing advance for a first user equipment to detect a D2D signal sent by a second user equipment; determining a reference time according to a received reference signal; determining, according to the first timing advance and the reference time, a first time for detecting the D2D signal; and detecting the D2D signal at the first time. So that when the user equipment detects the D2D signal at the determined time for detecting a D2D signal, a D2D signal detection success rate can be improved.