Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boilers are widely used in industrial production due to their high combustion efficiency, low pollutant emissions and wide load-adjustment range. However, the water-level-control system of a CFB boiler exhibits time-varying behavior and nonlinearity, which affect the control performance of the industrial system. This paper proposes a novel data-driven adaptive integral sliding-mode control (ISMC) method for the CFB control system with external disturbances. Firstly, the scheme designs a discrete ISMC law based on the full-format dynamic linearization (FFDL) data model, which is equivalent to a nonlinear system. Furthermore, a new reaching law is proposed to quickly drive the system state onto the sliding-mode surface. The improved ISMC control scheme only utilizes the input–output data during the design process and does not require model information. After theoretically verifying the stability of the method proposed in this paper, it is further applied in MIMO systems. Finally, the control and practical effects of this method are evaluated by using the DHX25-1.25 CFB boiler installed in the special-equipment testing center. The experimental results show that, compared with the traditional sliding-mode control (SMC) and model-free adaptive-control (MFAC) methods, the improved control method can quickly track the given signal and exhibit resistance to noise interference. Furthermore, it can rapidly respond to changes in the working conditions of the CFB system.