The invention discloses a handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument for abdominal cavity minimally invasive surgery, and relates to the technical field of medical equipment for laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery. The handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument comprises a tail-end surgical forceps mechanism, a wrist flexible multi-joint combination and a control box. The wrist flexible multi-joint combination comprises a plurality of hook joins which are structurally identical to one another, the heads and the tails of the multiple hook joints are sequentially connected withone another, and the hook joint at the head of the wrist flexible multi-joint combination is connected with the tail-end surgical forceps mechanism; the control box comprises a shell, a routing pipe,a bottom plate, a gear transmission mechanism, a guide column group and two groups of bidirectional ratchet wheel transmission mechanisms, and the gear transmission mechanism, the guide column groupand the two groups of bidirectional ratchet wheel transmission mechanisms are arranged on the bottom plate. The handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument has the advantages that the problems of low flexibility ratios of the traditional medical surgical instruments and restriction on surgical operation due to rigid structures can be solved by the aid of the handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument; the handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument has movement self-locking properties, and a doctor can operate the handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument with a single hand; the handheld flexible multi-joint surgical instrument can be used for the abdominal cavity minimally invasive surgery.