Alunite concentrate can be obtained from Zijinshan copper tailings by flotation process, which contains a large amount of potassium alunite accompanied by kaoline and quartz. It is a potential source for the recovery of aluminum, potassium and gallium. Therefore, alunite flotation concentrate extracted from copper tailings is considered for the recovery of aluminum, potassium and gallium in this work. Compared with the traditional process, direct leaching of alunite concentrate in KOH solution has the advantages of avoiding the thermal decomposition process with high energy consumption and reducing the interference of impurity ions. The direct leaching behavior of alunite concentrate in KOH solution is researched. The variation of element leaching ratio with time under different KOH concentration (4~8 mol/L) and leaching temperature (60~90℃) is investigated emphatically. The control step of the direct leaching of alunite concentrate in KOH solution is investigated on the research of kinetic analysis. Based on the above studies, mechanical activation is introduced to promote efficient leaching of valuable elements from the concentrate. The results show that only the alunite phase decomposes during the alkaline leaching under experimental conditions. The increase of KOH concentration and leaching temperature is beneficial to the rapid leaching of elements. According to the kinetic theory of the shrinkage core model of liquid-solid reaction, it is found that the leaching reaction is controlled by chemical reaction step. The apparent activation energy of the reaction is 79.5 kJ/mol, and the order of chemical reaction of KOH is 2.31. According to the laser particle scanning analyzer, XRD and FTIR analysis, it is found that the mechanical activation reduces the particle size, increases the specific surface area and improves the degree of amorphous of the alunite ore. The reactivity of the concentrate is thus enhanced, and the leaching experiment shows that the leaching ratio of aluminum, potassium and gallium are increased for the ore after mechanical activation.