The present invention provides a double-circle sub-template underwater terrain matching method. The method comprises: acquiring a strip by a multi-beam sounding system, forming a two-dimensional elevation array by means of data processing, transforming the two-dimensional elevation array into a gray-scale value, forming a to-be-matched template, calling an original database terrain elevation map, transforming the original database terrain elevation map into a gray-scale map, and forming a search mother map; selecting a relatively large template, selecting two small sub-templates as inscribed circles, determining a positional relationship between the double circles, and performing double-circle sub-map search matching on the mother map; and extracting an image corner point feature amount, matching double-circle sub-maps searched by the mother map with the sub-templates, and acquiring the position of an underwater vehicle. Compared with a conventional single template matching method, the double-circle sub-template underwater terrain matching method provided by the present invention solves the problem of excessively long traversal search matching time; and by using a circular template, the calculation complexity of a corner point feature detection algorithm can be lowered, the influence of problems such as rotation, affine transformation and the like is overcome, the matching time is shortened, the matching precision is improved, and very good generalization and applicability are achieved.