Abstract: In order to determine 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in mainstream cigarette smoke simultaneously, a solid phase extraction-GC/MS method was developed by optimizing ultrasonic extraction time and GC/MS chromatographic conditions. Nine Virginia-type cigarette samples of different brands with different labeled tar levels were determined by the developed method. The results showed that:1) The optimum time for ultrasonic extraction was 40 min, 16 PAHs were well separated under the optimized chromatographic conditions. R² of PAHs' working curves ranged from 0.997 9 to 0.999 8. The limit of detection was 0.12-2.55 ng/cig. The recoveries ranged from 75.74% to 117.35% with the relative standard deviation (RSD) less than 6.79%. The analysis of reference cigarette 3R4F indicated that there was no significant difference between the results determined by this method and reported in literature. 2) The total release of PAHs in mainstream smoke of the nine samples ranged from 586.00 to 1 475.79 ng/cig, and the amounts decreased with the decrease of labeled tar level. This method is simple, fast, accurate and suitable for the simultaneous determination of 16 PAHs in mainstream cigarette smoke.