Disclosed are a method and apparatus for manufacturing tubes, preferably tubes composed of high-tensile steels or special alloys, using the cold pilger rolling method with two rolling stands which can be moved backward and forward, at least in opposite directions at times and in the rolling direction by means of crank drives. The rolling stands have rollers which are calibrated in a tapering manner and which, driven by toothed racks via cogs, roll over the material to be rolled, with an alternating rotation direction. The majority of the forming work takes place on the first rolling stand and a relatively small portion of the forming work takes place on the second rolling stand and additional smoothing work is carried out. Reduction rolling takes place in both rolling stands via a mandrel which is matched to the roller caliber, and the backward and forward movements of the two rolling stands are matched to one another in such a manner that the angular offset between the crank drives is chosen such that the forming zone of the first stand does not occur at the same time as the forming zone of the second stand.