This paper addresses the leader-following consensus problem of linear multi-agent systems (MASs) with communication noise. Each agent's dynamical behavior is described by a linear multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) system, and the agent's full state is assumed to be unavailable. To deal with this challenge, a state observer is constructed to estimate the agent's full state. A dynamic output-feedback based protocol that is based on the estimated state is proposed. To mitigate the effect of communication noise, noise-attenuation gains are also introduced into the proposed protocol. In this study, each agent is allowed to have its own noise-attenuation gain. It is shown that the proposed protocol can solve the mean square leader-following consensus problem of a linear MIMO MAS. Moreover, if all noise-attenuation gains are of (t ), where ∈(0,1), the convergence rate of the MAS can be quantitatively analyzed. It turns out that all followers' states converge to the leader's state in the mean square sense at a rate of O(t ). multi-agent system, mean square consensus, communication noise, noise-attenuation gain, convergence rate Citation:Wang Y P, Cheng L, Yang C G, et al. Reaching a stochastic consensus in the noisy networks of linear MIMO agents: Dynamic output-feedback and convergence rate.