By establishing an extended STIRPAT model, different scenarios were set up to predict the future tourism carbon emissions of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The Tapio decoupling model and LMDI decomposition method were combined to analyze the decoupling effect and factors driving tourism carbon emissions in the historical and future periods of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The results show that from 2000 to 2019, the carbon emissions of tourism in the Yangtze River Economic Belt exhibited a sustained growth trend and then a downward trend, and the overall spatial pattern was ‘low in the central region and high in the east and west’. In the different scenarios, the carbon emissions of tourism in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in the future show a trend of increasing at first and then decreasing, with peaks in different periods. In the historical period, the decoupling state of carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt was mainly weak decoupling. Under the benchmark scenario, the decoupling of carbon emissions in the future tourism industry will not reach a strong decoupling state, while under the medium and low-carbon scenarios, strong decoupling will be achieved in different periods. Carbon emission intensity is the main factor in promoting the decoupling of tourism carbon emission in the historical period, while carbon emission intensity and investment efficiency are the main factors driving decoupling in the future. Accordingly, low-carbon development strategies are proposed for tourism in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.