Groundwater is found beneath the earth's surface in the spaces between soil particles, rocks, and in underground aquifers. However, the availability and quality of groundwater are often limited, and therefore, its sustainable management is critical. The groundwater potential map is suitable for groundwater exploitation and provides useful information for water resources planning and management. A case study was conducted to find out groundwater potential zones in the Fato River catchment located in the west Showa zone with an aerial extent of 3,666 Square kilometers. Different thematic layers were used to determine the groundwater potential of the catchment. For this aim, nine thematic layers were considered in this study area. geology, drainage density, lineament density, rainfall, soil type, slope, topographic wetness index, elevation, and land use land cover were prepared using the ArcGIS 10.4 software and finally converted into raster format by using the ArcGIS tool. Weights were assigned to all thematic layers according to their relative importance in groundwater occurrence and the corresponding weights of parameters were computed using the GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation technique. To create the groundwater potential map, the thematic maps of the study area were divided into five zones (very high, high, moderate, low, and very low). Each of the thematic maps was assigned a weight that represents its importance with respect to groundwater potentials and occurrences based on different criteria, standards, and previous works. Lastly, a raster map of the groundwater potential zones (GWPZs) of the study area was confirmed by utilizing borehole data obtained from different wells scattered throughout the study area to examine the performance of the approach and to validate groundwater potentials of the study area. Keywords: Groundwater potential, Fato River, GIS, AHP, thematic map