A receiving method and apparatus in a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication system are provided. The method includes receiving reception signals through a plurality of reception antennas, grouping symbols corresponding to the reception signals, respectively, into a preset number of groups, and rearranging symbols of the respective groups, transforming the reception signals by applying QR decomposition to the reception signals, sequentially canceling interference due to each of total possible candidate symbols for a first symbol based on an order of the rearranged symbols in the transformed reception signals, determining a portion of the total possible candidate symbols to be a candidate symbol set for each remaining symbol, except for the first symbol, using the interference-canceled reception signal, and determining log-likelihood ratio values of the first symbol, which are to be used upon decoding the received signals, using candidate symbols for the first symbol and each remaining symbol.