In an adaptive feedback method for a cellular communication system having plural terminals feeding back channel information to an access point, the system selects one of an opportunistic mode and a polling mode as a feedback mode between an access point and the terminals on the basis of system and traffic parameters, sets up the access point and the terminals for the selected feedback mode, and feeds back the channel information from the terminals to the access point in the selected feedback mode. The adaptive feedback method changes the feedback mechanism adaptively to the system and traffic environment, making it possible to increase the system throughput as well as to decrease the MAC overhead regardless of the variation of the number of MSs.