A systematic investigation was performed to study the effect of Cr2O3 on dielectric, ferroelectric and field-induced strain properties of 0.18Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–0.82Pb(Zr0.49Ti0.51)O3 (0.18PMN–0.82PZT) ceramics. The PMNZT/xCr2O3 (with x = 0, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.30, 0.50 wt%) ceramics were prepared by solid state reaction and sintering process. Dielectric properties of the as-prepared ceramics were characterized, wherein the maximum dielectric constant (ɛ m) presents an increasing trend when x < 0.15, followed by a down-trend with an abrupt increase at x = 0.50. The temperature of maximum dielectric constant (T m) appears to display a slight change from 297 °C (x = 0.50) to 310 °C (x = 0.30). At 1 kHz, the sample with composition of x = 0.15 has the largest room temperature dielectric constant ɛ r of 1599 and maximum dielectric constant ɛ m of 25813 at T m, while the sample with composition of x = 0.3 possess the maximum dielectric relaxor factor of γ = 1.93. The remnant polarization gradually decreased from 37.3 to 23.10 μC/cm2 with increasing Cr2O3 content. Meanwhile, compared with pure 0.18PMN–0.82PZT, the coercive field (E c) of the 0.18PMN–0.82PZT+xCr2O3 ceramics are found to be significantly improved when x > 0.10. Furthermore, the field-induced strain of 0.18PMN–0.82PZT+xCr2O3 ceramics appeared to be lower than that of pure 0.18PMN–0.82PZT. However, an up-trend is observable in the field-induced strain of 0.18PMN–0.82PZT+xCr2O3 ceramics with increasing Cr2O3 content up to x = 0.15, which corresponds to a peak value of 0.158%.