Selective hydrogenation of acetylene is a key process in the ethylene industry to remove acetylene impurities and obtain high-quality ethylene products. The development of highly active and selective catalyst for acetylene hydrogenation, which are green and economical, is currently a hot and difficult research topic in this field. In this paper, xCeO2-Al2O3 supports with different CeO2 additions were synthesized by hydrothermal method and evaluated experimentally. The results showed that 2Ni/5CeO2-Al2O3 exhibited excellent catalytic performance with 99.7% conversion and 94.9% selectivity at 280℃ compared with the catalyst without CeO2 addition. However, the excess CeO2 would reduce the specific surface area and pore volume of the catalyst, block the catalyst pores, and affect the dispersion of Ni species on the surface, which in turn would affect the reaction performance of the catalyst. The catalyst samples were characterized by XRD, H2-TPR, SEM, BET, XPS, NH3-TPD and TG. The excellent performance was found to be mainly attributed to the addition of CeO2 attenuating the strong Ni-Al interactions and reducing the generation of inert NiAl2O4 spinel phases, which effectively enhanced the activity, selectivity and stability of the catalyst.