The work aims to improve the stability of tension control of the gravure press unwinding system. An unwinding tension control method was proposed combined with fuzzy control and active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). According to the working principle of unwinding systems, the mathematical models of strip tension, pendulum roller kinetics, roller kinetics were established respectively. Then, the nonlinear mathematical model of unwinding system was also obtained. In order to improve the decoupling performance, anti-interference performance and internal robustness of the control system, a fuzzy active disturbance rejection controller was designed when the fuzzy control was introduced based on the active disturbance rejection control, and related simulation research and analysis were carried out. The simulation results showed that, compared with the PID controller, the fuzzy-ADRC could well realize the system decoupling, and had better anti-interference performance and internal robustness. The method in the paper can realize the constant tension control of gravure press unwinding system.