Adhesive force is a critical feature in vitro for soft hydrogels as wound dressing. Here we employ trimethylol melamine as a tri-functional cross-linker to enhance the adhesive force of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogels. First, trimethylol melamine was prepared using melamine and formaldehyde by a condensation reaction. Then PVA was cross-linked in an aqueous medium to form hydrogels by using trimethylol melamine as a cross-linker. It was found that trimethylol melamine cross-linked PVA hydrogels (TMCPVA) exhibited a good adhesion property with a low degree of cross-linking and no residue after the TMCPVA peeled from skins, indicating the TMCPVA were suitable for adhesive wound dressing. Moreover, their structures, morphology and adhesive forces were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and texture analyzer (TA). The results indicated that TMCPVA would be promising wound dressing materials with biocompatible and well-adhesive properties.