In the current paper, time-varying formation tracking (TVFT) problems for second-order multiagent systems with external disturbances are studied. Based on the active disturbance rejection controller, a robust TVFT protocol is proposed, which contains the disturbance compensation. To restrain the influence of external disturbances, an extended state observer is designed to estimate the disturbance compensation using the control input and output information of the system. For the case that the desired formation trajectories are known, an approach to give the time-varying formation with a stationary transient process is proposed by constructing a tracking-differentiator, which actually plan a motion taking the shortest time along the desired trajectories. An algorithm is designed to determine the control parameter matrix of the protocol, in which the formation tracking feasibility condition is given. Finally, to verify the theoretical results, two numerical simulation examples are presented.INDEX TERMS Active disturbance rejection controller, time-varying formation tracking (TVFT), extended state observer, tracking-differentiator.