In this paper, an adaptive discrete-time sliding mode control based on reduced-order disturbance observer is proposed for discretized multi-input multi-output systems subjected to unmatching condition. By using the designed discrete reduced-order disturbance observer, a new sliding surface is constructed to counteract the unmatched uncertainties. Then, to guarantee a smaller width of the quasi sliding mode domain, an adaptive reaching law is developed, whose switching gain is adaptively tuned to prevent overestimation of disturbance on the premise of ensuring the reaching condition of sliding surface; meanwhile, the ranges of the quasi sliding mode band and attractiveness region are deduced. The proposed control algorithm has low computational complexity and needs no information about the upper bound of unmatched disturbance. The simulations on the control of a bank-to-turn missile demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reject unmatched disturbance, and provide higher accuracy in comparison with traditional methods. Keywords Discrete-time sliding mode control • Adaptive reaching law • Reduced-order disturbance observer • Unmatched disturbance • Multi-input multi-output system