The invention discloses a method for determining colorant in cigarette package materials. The method is as below: preparing methanol, ammonia and water in the volume ratio of 1:1:8 into an extract liquor, crushing the cigarette packaging material sample, mixing well, adding the extract liquor, shaking, extracting, standing, then removing a supernatant, passing the supernatant through an organic phase membrane for liquid phase chromatographic analysis, detecting contents of six colorants including lemon yellow, Allura red, basic orange, cherry red pigment, auramine O and curcumin, conducting qualitative test by retention time combined with compound ultraviolet spectroscopy, and conducting quantification teest by using an external standard method. The invention can simultaneously detect six colorants including lemon yellow, Allura red, basic orange, cherry red pigment, auramine O and curcumin in the cigarette packaging material, can ensure the colorant content in a controllable range, accurately measure the content of various colorants in cigarette packaging material. The method has the advanategs of simple and convenient method, simple treatment, good reproducibility, high recovery rate, high sensitivity of analysis determination, accurate quantification and fast analysis, and is applicable to the analysis and determination of bulk samples.