Abstract: To investigate the influence of lateral confinement stiffness of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) sheets on the macro- and meso-mechanical properties of axially compressed coal cylinders, uniaxial compression tests were conducted on both plain coal cylinders and coal cylinders confined with a single layer of CFRP sheet using a WDW-300 universal testing machine. A continuum-discontinuum coupled numerical model for CFRP-confined coal cylinders was established based on the PFC^3D−FLAC^3D coupling simulation method, and its validity was verified through uniaxial compression tests. Based on this, the effects of lateral confinement stiffness of CFRP sheets on the characteristic stress, normal contact force fabric, and crack evolution of axially compressed coal cylinders were further investigated. The results indicate that: The peak stress increases with lateral confinement stiffness following a negative exponential function. As the lateral confinement stiffness increases, the anisotropy of the normal contact force fabric gradually weakens, and the differences in normal contact forces exhibit a negative exponential decay trend. The number of cracks increases with axial strain following an S-shaped Bessel function. In the post-peak instability stage, failure is dominated by shear cracks when the confinement stiffness is below 0.95 GPa, whereas tensile cracks prevail at higher stiffness levels. A new method for determining the yield stress, based on the second-order difference of the crack number with respect to time steps, was proposed. By analyzing the variation in the crack generation rate, it was found that the yield stress is concentrated between 82.54% and 89.85% of the peak stress level, and its evolution pattern is consistent with that of the peak stress. The findings provide theoretical insights for the application of CFRP materials in reinforcing abandoned coal pillars in goaf areas.