Abstract: When wind turbines operate in cold regions, the blade is prone to ice formation, which changes the blade’s shape and affects its aerodynamic performance. To assess the influence of icing surface roughness on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine blade airfoils, the aerodynamic characteristics of two types of airfoils, symmetric (NACA-0012) and asymmetric (NACA-23012), were compared under the same icing conditions and icing roughness parameters using a computational fluid dynamics method. The results showed that when rime ice was generated at the leading edge of both NACA0012 and NACA23012 airfoils, the ice roughness had a significant effect on the aerodynamic performance of both icing airfoils. When horn ice was generated at the leading edge of both airfoils, the effect of ice roughness on the aerodynamic performance of the NACA23012 icing airfoil was small, and only increased the width of the separation vortex at the trailing edge of the airfoil. There was, a greater effect of horn ice on the NACA0012 airfoil than the NACA23012 airfoil, which delayed the stall angle of attack of NACA0012 icing airfoil. In addition, when rime ice was generated at the leading edge of both NACA0012 and NACA23012 airfoils, the drag coefficient of NACA23012 with rime ice airfoil increased faster than that of NACA0012 icing airfoil.