Impact event is the key factor influencing the operational state of the mechanical equipment. Additionally, nonlinear factors existing in the complex mechanical equipment which are currently attracting more and more attention. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel hybrid-separate identification strategy to solve the force identification problem of the nonlinear structure under impact excitation. The ‘hybrid’ means that the identification strategy contains both l1-norm (sparse) and l2-norm regularization methods. The ‘separate’ means that the nonlinear response part only generated by nonlinear force needs to be separated from measured response. First, the state-of-the-art two-step iterative shrinkage/thresholding (TwIST) algorithm and sparse representation with the cubic B-spline function are developed to solve established normalized sparse regularization model to identify the accurate impact force and accurate peak value of the nonlinear force. Then, the identified impact force is substituted into the nonlinear response separation equation to obtain the nonlinear response part. Finally, a reduced transfer equation is established and solved by the classical Tikhonove regularization method to obtain the wave profile (variation trend) of the nonlinear force. Numerical and experimental identification results demonstrate that the novel hybrid-separate strategy can accurately and efficiently obtain the nonlinear force and impact force for the nonlinear structure.