Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain computer-interface (BCI) is one of the most popular BCI systems. An efficient SSVEP-based BCI system in shorter time with higher accuracy in recognizing SSVEP has been pursued by many studies. This paper introduces a novel multiway canonical correlation analysis (Multiway CCA) approach to recognize SSVEP. This approach is based on tensor CCA and focuses on multiway data arrays. Multiple CCAs are used to find appropriate reference signals for SSVEP recognition from different data arrays. SSVEP is then recognized by implementing multiple linear regression (MLR) between EEG and optimized reference signals. The proposed Multiway CCA is verified by comparing to the standard CCA and power spectral density analysis (PSDA). Results showed that the Multiway CCA achieved higher recognition accuracy within shorter time than that of the CCA and PSDA.