The upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions has attracted considerable interest because of its important applications in photoelectric conversion, color display, laser device, multiplexed biolabeling, and security printing. Previous studies mainly explored the upconversion luminescence generation through excited state absorption, energy transfer upconversion, and photon avalanche under the continuous wave laser excitation. Here, we focus on the upconversion luminescence generation through a nonresonant multiphoton absorption by using the intense femtosecond pulsed laser excitation and study the upconversion luminescence intensity control by varying the femtosecond laser phase and polarization. We show that the upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions under the intense femtosecond laser field excitation is easy to be obtained due to the nonresonant multiphoton absorption through the nonlinear interaction between light and matter, which is not available by the continuous wave laser excitation in previous works. We also show that the upconversion luminescence intensity can be effectively controlled by varying the femtosecond pulsed laser phase and polarization, which can open a new technological opportunity to generate and control the upconversion luminescence of rare-earth ions and also can be further extended to the relevant application areas.