The dynamics of the winder roller of a roll-to-roll printing system for printed electronics is a time-varying system because of the variation of the winder roller radius owing to rewinding or unwinding of the web. Therefore, an adaptive control method considering the time-variant characteristics is required for precise tension control. In this study, the variable PID gain method is applied to the actual roll-to-roll system and verified by experiments for unwinder tension control. The required value of the winder roller radius for the application of the variable PID gain is estimated from the measurement of the winder tension and winder motor torque. The simulation results as well as experimental results show that the fixed PID gain control cannot stabilize the tension of the winder roller with varying winder roller radius. On the other hand, the variable PID gain method can control the tension of the winder roller regardless of the winder roller radius.