The invention provides a preparation method of chloranil, and belongs to the technical field of chemical production. According to the invention, glacial acetic acid is used as a solvent, and glacial acetic acid has certain solubility to tetrachlorohydroquinone, but has very low solubility to the product tetrachlorobenzoquinone, thus being beneficial to improving the product yield; the glacial acetic acid is acidic, so that the oxidability of nitric acid can be improved when the nitric acid is used as an oxidizing agent. Nitric acid or chlorine is used as an oxidizing agent to oxidize tetrachlorohydroquinone to prepare tetrachlorobenzoquinone, the raw materials are cheap and easy to obtain, the operation method is simple, the reaction route is short, the equipment investment is low, the market competitiveness in the production cost is extremely high, the product yield is higher than 98%, special purification treatment is not needed, and the final product purity is higher than 99.0%.