The invention discloses a general SVPWM modulation method for a modular multilevel converter, which belongs to the technical field of multilevel power electronic converter control. According to the algorithm, a single modular multilevel converter is equivalently considered as a diode-clamped three-level converter, so that the multi-module MMC SVPWM technology can be equivalent to the combination of a three-level SVPWM technology and a carrier phase-shifting technology; and after output signals of an energy equalization control module and a capacitor voltage-sharing control module are limited within the range from -1 to 1, driving signals of a power device are rationally allocated to complete the modulation of the algorithm. According to the method provided by the invention, the SVPWM technology of the modular multilevel converter is equivalent to the combination of the three-level SVPWM technology and the carrier phase-shifting technology; the algorithm is simple; the direct current voltage utilization ratio is high; and the method can be applied to any level, and can be widely promoted and applied in the field of MMC control.