The invention relates to a method for extracting lycopene from tomato peel residue, which includes steps of (1) carrying out peel and seed separating process for tomato peel residue to obtain tomato peel and tomato seed; (2) crushing the obtained tomato peel to obtain tomato peel slurry; (3) pre-treating the tomato peel slurry, dewatering and removing impurities; (4) adding the treated tomato peel slurry into organic solvent to carrying out extracting, and collecting extract; and (5) concentrating in vacuum to obtain lycopene oil resin. The method for extracting lycopene provided by the present invention uses tomato processing industry waste-tomato peel residue as raw material to obtain lycopene product with high content. The method is easy, has wide raw material source and low cost, is favourable to supple raw material source of lycopene production, avoids resource waste and environmental pollution, increases economic benefit of tomato industry, and has wide development prospect.