Abstract: With the continuous increase in mining depth of steeply inclined coal seams, rockburst in roadways during excavation have become increasingly prominent. This paper adopts a comprehensive approach combining field monitoring, numerical simulation and theoretical analysis to investigate the rockburst mechanism and the stress relief and energy release rockburst prevention methods for double-roadway excavation in steeply inclined coal seams. Microseismic monitoring shows that, compared with single roadway excavation, the energy and frequency of microseismic events increase significantly during opposite or same direction excavation of two parallel roadways in steeply inclined coal seams. The mutual disturbance between the two roadways during excavation increases the risk of rockburst. It is found that the stress and energy in the coal seam are highly concentrated under the action of high horizontal stress. The excavation roadway is only 4.2 m away from the peak stress and energy zone, which provides the stress and energy basis for the occurrence of rockburst. The increase in horizontal stress concentration coefficient is smaller when two roadways are excavated in opposite directions or in the same direction compared to single roadway excavation, about 0.03. However, roadway excavation induces massive energy release from the coal seam, generating strong dynamic loads. When the strong dynamic load caused by the disturbance of roadway excavation is superimposed with the high static load of the burst prone roadway and exceeds the rockburst strength, a rockburst in the excavation roadway will be induced. According to the rockburst mechanism, a prevention method of stress relief and energy release for excavation roadways is proposed: reducing the number of simultaneous excavations or pre-fracturing the coal body to be excavated in advance to release accumulated energy and weaken dynamic load disturbance, and destroying the lateral coal mass of roadways to reduce horizontal stress concentration. On this basis, measures including coal seam water infusion pre-splitting and lateral large diameter boreholes are optimized and designed. After the implementation of the optimized measures, the total frequency and daily total energy of microseismic events decrease by 30.43% and 58.36% respectively, and the risk of rockburst is significantly reduced, achieving favorable effects in rockburst prevention and control.