Mechanical alloying (MA) has been used to fabricate the Co 2 FeAl Heusler alloy with a nanocrystalline structure. The formation mechanism of the alloy has been investigated.Rietveld analysis showed that all samples that were milled for more than 15 hours had an L2 1 structure with a space group of Fm3m. The crystallite size and internal strain of the samples were calculated using the Williamson-Hall equation. With mechanical alloying of up to 20 hours the crystallite size of Co 2 FeAl increased, after which the crystallite size started to decrease. In contrast, internal strain first decreased during the process and then increased with the increase of milling time. The powder obtained after 20 hours of MA was split into three parts and separately annealed at 300, 500 and 700 o C for 5 hours. A considerable increase was observed in the hardness value of powder particles with the increase of annealing temperature up to 500 o C. However, the hardness value of the sample annealed at 700 o C decreased. It seems that this feature is related to parameters such as increase of crystallite size, enhancement of lattice ordering, change in density of defects and impurities and nonstoichiometric effects.