The non-radiative decay of the 5d excited state of Ce 3þ ions in Y 2 O 2 S was studied with fluorescence spectroscopy. It is shown that temperature quenching of Ce 3þ ion fluorescence is due to high-order multiphonon relaxation. The direct evidence of spatial confinement effect in multiphonon relaxation was obtained: relaxation is more efficient in nanoparticles than in micron-sized particles. 1 Introduction In insulating nanocrystalline materials doped with rare earth (RE) or transition metal (TM) ions and consisting of ''free-standing'' loosely packed nanocrystalline clusters the electron-phonon interaction of impurity ions contained in the nanoparticles is strongly modified compared to that in the bulk crystals. The rate of electronic relaxation between closely spaced energy levels of ions in small nanoparticles resulting from a single-phonon direct process can experience a significant reduction due to the gap in the acoustic-phonon spectrum at low frequencies [1,2]. In nanoparticles optical dephasing resulting from two-phonon Raman processes can be enhanced and its temperature dependence modified by the confinement of the phonon modes and the alteration in the phonon density of states due to confinement [3,4].In the present study, we address the question of whether the confinement in nanoparticles influences the processes of non-radiative multiphonon relaxation [5] of the excited states of RE impurity ions. Multiphonon relaxation is an important process, which often determines the quantum yield of impurity ion fluorescence. This work is motivated, in part, by the interest in doped nanocrystalline materials for applications such as phosphors and scintillators.