We present the Bloch modal analysis of photonic crystal coupled resonator optical waveguide (CROW) based on the local Fourier modal method (LFMM). The objective of this analysis is to extract the dispersion relation and analyze optical Bloch eigenmodes of the structure. The evolution of each Bloch eigenmode with varying frequency can be visualized with the proposed LFMM. The recently proposed CROW structure of NTT Basic Research Laboratory group with missing center holes and perturbed lateral shift of holes near the center is taken as the exemplary CROW structure (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)