The invention concerns a method for detecting the wear of a cutting nozzle on a cutting torch for cutting steel workpieces, in particular slabs, blooms and slugs. A branch line exits to the cutting torch in the feed line of the heating gas connection, into which branch line a neutral medium with a set pressure is blown through the cutting nozzle after closing the medium valves for heating gas, cutting oxygen and heating oxygen. To do so, said process is carried out once when installing a new cutting nozzle for the calibration thereof. Said process is performed again at set intervals, depending on the usage of the cutting nozzle, in order to determine and to store in memory the wear condition of the cutting nozzle and to generate an optical and/or acoustic signal in case a predetermined maximum admissible deviation amount of the medium blown in has been exceeded.