The active antimicrobial packaging is a developing direction of food preservative packaging industry, and there is great market potential. The classification of active antimicrobial packaging was introduced from perspective of antibacterial agent in this paper. On the basis of comparing advantages and disadvantages including antimicrobial packaging of antibacterial activity only, release behavior and controlled release respectively, current situation and progress of the active antimicrobial packaging were analysed synthetically at home and abroad. Model of controlling the release of antimicrobial activity and dynamic equilibrium mechanism was established, in addition, the prospect of controlled-release antimicrobial packaging could be known in the future.