The Yangtze River Basin (YRB) is an essential location for the development of eco-civilization in China, and the state of water environment in the watershed is still unsatisfactory at this stage. Therefore, 11 provinces (cities) of YRB were selected for the present study. The Water Resources Carrying Capacity (WRCC) indicator scheme is founded on the conceptual structure of Social-Economic-Natural Complex Ecosystem (SENCE), and 21 indicators in 3 aspects are con-structed. The entropy-weighted- TOPSIS method and grey relational analysis (GRA) were used to measure the WRCC of YRB from 2012 to 2021 and determine the driving factors. The results show that, first, there are large differences in WRCC levels in different regions, with an overall up-stream>midstream>downstream. The top three provinces (cities) in order are Szechwan (0.4721), Qinghai (0.4682) and Tibet (0.4655). Second, the trend of WRCC change is divided into three phases, fluctuating decline (2012-2015), recovery (2016-2018), and growth (2019-2021). Third, the subsystems of WRCC show stability, equilibrium, and variance, respectively. (4) The main drivers of WRCC are total fish production (0.8780), per capita daily domestic water consumption (0.8640), and total agricultural water consumption (0.8630).