It provides a method (300) for polar decoding a received signal into a number, N, of bits with Successive Cancellation List, SCL. The method (300) includes: at the i-th level of a binary tree for decoding the i-th bit of the N bits, where 1≤i≤N: when the i-th bit is an information bit, calculating (310) a path metric for each of 2*Li-1 candidate paths at the i-th level, where Li-1 is an SCL size at the (i−1)-th level and L0=1; setting (320) an SCL size at the i-th level, Li, based on Li-1 and a statistical distribution of the path metrics calculated for the 2*Li-1 candidate paths; and selecting (330) Li surviving paths from the 2*Li-1 candidate paths based on their respective path metrics.