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The barrier to realizing the potential of lignocellulosic bioethanol is the recalcitrance of cellulosic biomass. Overcoming this biomass recalcitrance is the key challenge to large scale production of lignocellulosic bioethanol. Pretreatment is an important and critical step that enables enzyme hydrolysis of lignocellulose conversion to ethanol. Finding a pretreatment method for reducing the high recalcitrance via cost-effective pretreatment methods would therefore be of great benefit. This study aims at investigating the effect of pretreatment on delignification process of sugarcane bagasse and palm oil trunk. Two methods of pretreatment were compared i.e. alkaline hydrogen peroxide pretreatment (1% and 5% H2O2) and subcritical water pretreatment (170oC, 2.2 MPa) for the effectiveness of reducing the lignin content. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis was also performed to investigate the effect of pretreatment on structure profile of lignocellulosic biomass. It was observed that alkaline hydrogen peroxide pretreatment gave better results than subcritical water pretreatment based on the lignin content for both lignocellulosic biomass. Pretreated sugarcane bagasse presented lower lignin content than pretreated palm oil trunk. Lignin was successfully removed until 56.99% under the best condition of 5% of alkaline hydrogen peroxide, at 28oC for 72 h incubation. This study confirmed that alkaline pretreatment was found have a better method for the conversion of lignocellulosic materials. Furthermore, sugarcane bagasse has a greater potency as basic raw materials used for the bioethanol production than palm oil trunk because it has lower content of lignin with higher content of cellulose.