Using high-purity commercial oxide powders as raw materials, the layered composite ceramic green bodies that meet the design requirements were obtained by dry pressing combined with cold isostatic pressing. Two-layered and three-layered composite YAG/10% Yb∶YAG (atomic number fraction) transparent ceramics with high optical quality were successfully fabricated by vacuum pre-sintering at 1 750 ℃ for 30 h combined with hot isostatic pressing at 1 750 ℃ for 3 h under 200 MPa Ar. The optical transparency, microstructure and elemental distribution of the composite ceramics were analyzed. The results show that, the in-line transmittance values of two-layered and three-layered composite YAG/Yb∶YAG transparent ceramics with the thickness of 4 mm are 83.6% and 84.1% at 1 100 nm, respectively. Both YAG and Yb∶YAG ceramic regions have dense microstructure, and the average grain sizes are 29.0 and 34.5 μm, respectively. The element analysis of surface scanning images and linear scan images for the central section reveal that the boundary between YAG and Yb∶YAG ceramic region is straight, with Yb element mainly existing in the Yb∶YAG ceramic region, indicating that the actual structure of the layer-structured transparent ceramics is consistent with the initial design.