The invention proposes an adaptive local constraint-based discriminative dictionary learning algorithm. The objective of the invention is to solve problems of a dictionary learning algorithm in face recognition. According to the adaptive local constraint-based discriminative dictionary learning algorithm, atoms are utilized to construct an adaptive laplacian diagram, and the adaptive laplacian diagram is made to keep the local structural features of a dictionary; the row vector of an encoding coefficient matrix and the laplacian diagram of the dictionary are utilized to design a local constraint discriminant term, so that the dictionary has higher discrimination performance; and an adaptive local constraint discriminative dictionary learning-based face recognition model is designed; and therefore, the classification performance of face recognition can be improved. The smooth implementation of the algorithm of the present invention will enrich and develop a constraint-based dictionary learning theoretical system and plays an importable role for the strengthening of dictionary discrimination performance and the improvement of face recognition.