Embodiments of the present invention disclose a communication method, an access network device, and a core network device. The method includes: sending, by a source base station, a first handover request to a core network device, where the first handover request is used to request to hand over a current session of a terminal from the source base station to any one of at least one base station, and the first handover request includes information about the at least one base station; and receiving, by the source base station, a first handover response message from the core network device, where the first handover response message includes indication information, and the indication information is used to indicate whether a first base station of the at least one base station supports a network slice corresponding to the current session of the terminal device. According to this application, a handover success probability can be improved.