The work aims to study the optimal incentive strategy of waste express packaging recycling under multi-player game aiming at the problems of low enthusiasm and difficulty in recycling of waste express packaging by express packaging manufacturers, express enterprises and consumers. The method of game theory was adopted to construct a closed-loop supply chain model and obtain the optimal recycling decision of express enterprises and the optimal incentive strategy of the government. When the government introduced incentive mechanism, the effect was obviously better than that in the situation without incentive mechanism. The incentive strength of the government had a significant impact on the profits of waste express packaging supply chain enterprises, consumer surplus and total social welfare. There was an optimal incentive strength value βto maximize the total social welfare. The lowest recycling rate, the lowest return rate of consumers and the incentive strength of the government are the most critical parameters of the governmental incentive mechanism. The government should establish the incentive mechanism with the incentive strength valueβ when the total social welfare is the largest as the optimal strategy, which can not only enable manufacturers and express enterprises to increase profits through recycling, but also improve the enthusiasm of consumers to participate in recycling, thus increasing total social welfare and achieving the benign development goal of win-win for consumers, enterprises and society.