A method for determining an audio coding mode and a related apparatus are provided. The method may include: determining a channel combination scheme for a current frame, where the determined channel combination scheme for the current frame is one of a plurality of channel combination schemes; and determining a coding mode of the current frame based on a channel combination scheme for a previous frame and the channel combination scheme for the current frame, where the coding mode of the current frame is one of a plurality of coding modes. The technical solutions provided in embodiments of this application help improve encoding quality.