Unlike traditional food packaging which is mainly used to enhance food quality and provide consumers with product descriptions, intelligent packaging, as a novel type of food packaging system, is capable of executing intelligent functions and has attracted much attention during the past decade. Considering the inherent advantages of polysaccharides such as excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-toxicity, and high abundance, intelligent packaging materials based on such polymers are believed to be one of the most promising candidates among current intelligent food packing systems. This work summarizes the latest research on the development, properties and applications of natural polysaccharide-based intelligent food packaging materials. Moreover, this paper shows that polysaccharides have a good application prospect in the intelligent packaging industry. First, the intelligent packaging system and polysaccharide-based intelligent packaging are summarized, and several representative polysaccharides are introduced. Second, various sensing methods for monitoring changes in food properties are summarized, including those based on variation in temperature, humidity, oxygen levels, pH, chemical composition, or microbial contamination. Then, the application of polysaccharide-based intelligent packaging materials in the food industry is discussed. Finally, the difficulties and future directions of polysaccharide-based materials for intelligent food packaging are discussed.