Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and a device for obtaining a secondary timing advance. The method includes: after a secondary cell activation command is received or after a secondary cell is activated, if a secondary time alignment timer TAT of the secondary cell does not run, initiating, by a terminal, a random access procedure; and obtaining, by the terminal, the secondary TA according to a TA received in the random access procedure. With the method and the device for obtaining a timing advance according to embodiments of the present invention, a terminal initiates a random access procedure to obtain a secondary timing advance after the terminal receives a secondary cell activation command sent by a base station or after a secondary cell is activated, thereby saving signaling overhead and system resources.