The invention discloses a progressive caving mining method, which comprises the following steps of: a) dividing an ore body into ore blocks, dividing the ore blocks into ore rooms and ore pillars which comprise rib pillars and support pillars, mining or room units in the ore blocks, and mining the ore pillars by using a caving method, wherein the mining of each ore block is continuously finished in a stage ore blasting mode; b) mining the ore room units, namely mining by using a stage open stoping method, making the ore fall off in a clustered macroporous layered blasting mode, and finishing the mining of the ore rooms to form a compensating space for subsequent ore pillar caving; and c) caving the ore pillar units and the support pillar units at one time, namely performing clustered macroporous lateral blasting on the rib pillars, performing concentrated length hole blasting on the support pillars, and integrally caving the rib pillars and the support pillars simultaneously. The method has the characteristics of high efficiency, high strength and low cost of the open stoping method, and also has the characteristics of a caving mining method of no subsequent work of ore pillar mining and mined-out area treatment and contribution to centralized work.