A new technique for the coherent excitation of magnons is proposed which is based on the magnetic Raman nonlinearity. The excitation is obtained by mixing two laser beams with different frequencies (&ohgr;1,&ohgr;2) under phase‐match conditions [when (&ohgr;1−&ohgr;2) is equal to the frequency of one magnon mode and (k1−k2) is equal to the magnon wavevector]. The method allows selective excitation in frequency and wavevector and may by useful for magnon relaxation measurements. The proposed process is analyzed by quantum statistical methods. The number of excited magnons and the coherence properties of the generated states are investigated by using the representation of coherent magnon states. The results show that it is possible to excite a magnon population of the same order of magnitude as in nonlinear magnetic resonance experiments by using lasers with powers of hundreds of watts. The possibility of experimental observation is analyzed in detail for both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials.