A multicast forwarding method and an apparatus, where a bit-forwarding egress router (BFER) in a bit index explicit replication (BIER) network may determine, according to information about a multicast group in a multicast receiver list obtained in advance, an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a registration router that supports the multicast group, the BFER generates a BFER registration message according to the information about the multicast group and the IP address of the registration router that supports the multicast group, where the BFER registration message includes the information about the multicast group, a destination IP address of the BFER registration message is the IP address of the registration router, and a source IP address of the BFER registration message is an IP address of the BFER, and the BFER sends the BFER registration message to the registration router.