A walking assistance apparatus includes: a walking assistance attachment to be attached to a leg of a human body and including a variable stiffness mechanism having stiffness that is changeable in a direction where the human bends and stretches the knee by motor driving; and a controller. The controller includes a foot-end motion calculation part configured to receive an output from a sensor to detect motion of a leg and successively calculate a relative velocity of a foot end with reference to a waist of the human body; and a leg state determination part configured to determine shift timing between a swing phase and a stance phase based on the relative velocity of the foot end.