The third-order optical nonlinearities of poly (ether) urethane open cell (PEUOC)/MgO nanocomposites, dissolved in dimethylformamide are characterized by Z-scan technique with CW Nd:YAG laser at its second harmonic frequency of 532 nm with TEM00 Gaussian prole. The synthesized samples are also characterized by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy imaging. The nonlinear refractive indices and nonlinear absorption coecients of the synthesized samples are obtained in the order of 10 −8 cm 2 /W with negative sign and 10 −5 cm/W, respectively. The origin of optical nonlinearity in this case may be attributed due to the presence of strong saturable absorption eect. All the results suggest that the nonlinear coecients of the synthesized samples can be controlled by nanoparticles content into PEUOC. Furthermore, the results show that PEUOC/MgO may be promising candidate for the application to optical limiting in the visible region.