A method and an apparatus for establishing a forwarding path, the method including obtaining, by a first network node, path information of a to-be-established forwarding path, where the path information comprises an identifier of a network node on the forwarding path and a transmission resource requirement that needs to be allocated by the network node to the forwarding path, and sending a path establishment request packet based on the path information, where a packet header of the path establishment request packet comprises the path information, and where the path establishment request packet triggers the network node to allocate a transmission resource to the forwarding path based on the transmission resource requirement.