The invention provides an online diagnosis method for a mechanical fault of a high-voltage circuit breaker, which comprises the steps of S1, initializing an online diagnosis model; S2, for a new sample, acquiring a feature vector by using a pretreatment method, putting the feature vector into the online diagnosis model to calculate a discrimination function value and a fault diagnosis value; S3, inputting the discrimination function value and the fault diagnosis value of the new sample into an update triggering module to carry out calculation, judging whether an update triggering condition is satisfied or not, switching to a step S4 if the update triggering condition is satisfied, and resetting an update triggering counter; outputting a model diagnosis result directly if the update triggering condition is not satisfied so as to act as a final diagnosis result; and S4, updating the online diagnosis model, and switching to the step S2 so as to carry out diagnosis again on the current sample. According to the online diagnosis method, a historical training result can be fully utilized, the storage space requirement and the calculation time of the model can be greatly reduced, the calculation efficiency is improved, and online update of the fault diagnosis model is realized, thereby being better applied to mechanical fault diagnosis for equipment.