Abstract: Determination of limit recovery ratio of regional island coal face in coal mine is a problem for the design of island mining. The mechanical model of stress distribution in island panels is built through analyzing overlying strata spatial structure evolution and the corresponding stress distribution during island panels mining, and based on this, the estimation method for the stress distribution of island coal mining face is given, then the limit recovery ratio is obtained combining with the distinguishing method for island panel recoverability. The proposed method is verified by field application.