The present work reports on the promoting effects of rare earth elements (La, Ce and Y) to FeK/Al2O3 catalysts on liquid hydrocarbons from CO2 hydrogenation. The addition of La, Ce and Y can both improve the selectivity of C5+ hydrocarbons and reduce the selectivity of CH4. The C5+ selectivity can enhance to about 60 % with CH4 selectivity of around 11 % at CO2 conversions above 20 %. N-2 adsorption-desorption, in situ XRD, H-2-TPR, CO2/H-2-TPD, HRTEM and XPS are used to characterize the FeK/Al2O3 and FeK/M-Al2O3 (M = La, Ce, Y) catalysts. The results show that the introduction of rare earth elements into the FeK/Al2O3 catalyst obviously reduces the adsorption of H-2, which suppresses the CH4 formation. On the other hand, rare earth elements also promote the adsorbed CO2 species, which leads to the enhanced liquid hydrocarbons selectivity. Finally, the tailored CO2/H-2 ratio of CO2 and H-2 adsorption on the catalyst surface can influence the catalyst activity and the product selectivity evidently.