Iron concentrate pellets are an important burden for ironmaking in blast furnaces and high pellets rate is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions. The oxidation kinetics of pellets can be improved to optimize the pellet production process and increase the yield. In this work, the pellets prepared from the iron concentrates with different specific surface areas (SSAs) are oxidized at different temperatures for different time. The result shows that the oxidation rate increases dramatically with increasing temperature and time in the early stage, but increases slowly in the late stage. The apparent oxidation rate constant decreases with the incremental SSA of iron concentrates. The unreacted core model was used to establish the oxidation kinetic equations. For the pellets with SSA of 849 cm2/g, the activation energy is 55.19 kJ/mol in the early oxidation stage and that is 26.72 kJ/mol in the late oxidation stage. For the pellets with SSA of 1445 cm2/g, the activation energy is 61.73 kJ/mol in the early oxidation stage and that is 27.88 kJ/mol in the late oxidation stage. The restrictive steps for the oxidation of the two pellets are consistent. Chemical reaction controls the early stage of oxidation and the late stage of oxidation is controlled both by chemical reaction and gas internal diffusion. High SSA leads to a decrease in the porosity of the oxidized pellets, which affects the gas diffusion from the surface to the interior of the particles. Thus, both the oxidation degree and oxidation rate decrease.