To recover yttrium ion Y(III) from rare earth mine wastewater, performance of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) for Y(III) adsorption and desorption was investigated. The effects of mixing mode, initial concentration of Y(III), pH, salinity, lead ion concentration and particle size on adsorption performance of AGS were explored. Compared with agitation and oscillation, aeration has better adsorption performance, and more than 80% of Y(III) were adsorbed in the first 10 min. When the initial Y(III) concentration was less than 50 mg/L, AGS could adsorb all the Y(III) from wastewater, and then the adsorption efficiency decreased with the increase of Y(III) concentration. H+, Na+ and Pb2+ competed with Y(III) for the adsorption sites on AGS, resulting in the decrease of the adsorption efficiency. The AGS with particle size of 0.6-1 mm had the maximum Y(III) adsorption capacity, and the adsorption capacity of AGS with particle size of 2.4-3.0 mm after artificial crushing increased by 15%. The adsorption process was fitted with kinetics and thermodynamics. The kinetics was in accordance with the pseudo-second-order model (R2 was 0.9999), indicating that chemisorption played a dominant role. Webber-Morris equation showed that intra-particle diffusion was the main factor affecting the adsorption rate. The thermodynamics was consistent with Langmuir model (R2 was 0.9849), indicating that the adsorption process was a monolayer adsorption process, and the fitted maximum adsorption capacity was 24.39 mg/gSS. AGS before and after Y(III) adsorption was characterized by XPS. Functional groups involved in adsorption included ester group, carboxyl group and amino group, and ion exchange between Y(III) and K+ was detected. The desorption effect of nitric acid and ammonium chloride on saturated AGS was investigated. The single desorption efficiency of nitric acid (99%) was significantly higher than that of ammonium chloride (64%). However, after five cycles of adsorption and desorption, the desorption efficiency of nitric acid group decreased to 10%, whereas that of ammonium chloride group remained at 50%.