A two-stage brushless excitation method for hybrid excitation synchronous generators (HESGs) is proposed in this paper. Comparing with the traditional three-stage brushless excitation method, the auxiliary exciter is eliminated. The complete self-excitation is realized. As the main generator of two-stage brushless generation system, a tangential/radial HESG (T/R-HESG) is studied. The exciter is designed for T/R-HESG. The design steps are given. The operation modes of rotating rectifier are analyzed. A 1.5 kVA prototype of a two-stage brushless excitation generation system is made to verify the theoretical design. The measured results agree well with the theoretical design and finite element analysis. It shows that the design of exciter is correct and the two-stage brushless excitation method is feasible.