Oil shale semicoke, formed in retort furnaces, is a source of severe environmental pollution and is classified as a dangerous solid waste. For the industrial application of oil shale semicoke in combustion, this present work focused on the thermal analysis of its combustion characteristics. The pyrolysis and combustion experiments of semicoke were conducted in a Pyris thermogravimetric analyzer. From the comparison of pyrolysis curves with combustion curves, the ignition mechanism of semicoke samples prepared at different carbonization temperatures was deduced, and was found to be homogeneous for semicoke samples obtained at lower carbonization temperature, shifting to heterogeneous with an increase in the carbonization temperature. The effect of carbonization temperatures and heating rates on the combustion process was studied as well. At last, combustion kinetic parameters of semicoke were calculated with the binary linear regression method, showing that activation energy will increase with increasing the heating rate.