An Iterative Detection and Decoding (IDD) receiving apparatus and method in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication system. The IDD receiving apparatus includes an MIMO detector which generates soft decision values of coded bits by MIMO-decoding a receive vector, feedback priori information, and a list of candidate coded symbol vectors; a decoder which Soft-Input/Soft-Output (SISO)-decodes the soft decision values generated at the MIMO detector and feeds back soft decision values of the coded bits to the MIMO detector; a hard decision part which generates a coded symbol vector by performing a hard decision on the soft decision values generated at the decoder; and a list updater which generates a list of candidate coded symbol vectors using the receive vector and provides the list to the MIMO detector at a first iteration, updates the list using the coded symbol vector fed from the hard decision part, and provides the updated list to the MIMO detector at subsequent iterations.