Abstract: Food packaging is an important area of food research, and it plays an important role in maintaining food quality. Food is very easy to be contaminated by microorganisms during storage and transportation, resulting in spoilage of food, which can lead to symptoms such as food poisoning in humans as well as economic losses. Photodynamic inactivation (PDI) is a new type of sterilization technology developed in recent years, which has been proven to have great bactericidal effects. In addition, polysaccharides, as important active substances, are often used as food packaging materials to reduce the pollution of traditional plastic packaging due to their natural, non-toxic and biodegradable characteristics. Further development and application of polysaccharide-based food packaging materials with photodynamic antibacterial activity is of great significance for the promotion and innovation in this field. Here, this review provides an overview of the principle of action of PDI, the types of photosensitizers (PS), and the types of light sources. The composition of polysaccharide-based natural polymers and the characteristics of polysaccharide-based food packaging materials are also summarized, and the application of polysaccharide-based food packaging materials with photodynamic antibacterial activity in fruits, seafood, meat products and their influence on food quality is introduced, which provides an important reference for the development and application of polysaccharide-based food packaging materials in preservation technology.