Assessing available land and water resources for surface irrigation is essential for planning sustainable resource use and enhancing agricultural productivity. Evaluating land suitability of a given area is also vital to predict potential and limitation of the land for surface irrigation. Therefore, identifying and using area which is suitable for surface irrigation is very crucial in Qaho Watershed, Somali Regional State in order to meet demands of food and other agricultural commodities for growing population. This study aims to evaluate suitable lands for surface irrigation by using GIS and analytical hierarchical process (AHP) analysis. Watershed delineation, identification of the criteria for suitable surface irrigation mapping and applying APH analysis were the steps followed to assess the surface irrigation potential. To map suitable area for surface irrigation, nine environmental criteria (factors) were considered, such as slope, soil texture, soil drainage, electrical conductivity, soil pH, LULC, distance to river and distance to road. A weighted overlay analysis method was used to compute categories of highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and unsuitable land for surface irrigation in Qaho Watershed. The irrigation suitability analysis of these criteria indicate that about 55% of the slope, 97.6% of texture, 86.4% of pH, and 92.8% of the drainage in the study area are in the range highly suitable (S1) to moderately suitable class (S2). Overall, the weighted overlay analysis of these criteria gave the suitable land for surface irrigation. Results of the land suitability evaluation for surface irrigation showed that a total area of 2.6% (519 km2) is highly suitable (S1), 91% (18,099 km2) is moderately suitable class (S2), and the remaining 6.4% (1272 km2) of the study area is identified as marginally suitable class (S3). Due to flat topography and dominance of grassland and shrubland, there is no land that are currently not suitable (N1) for surface irrigation. In conclusion, most area of Qaho Watershed is potentially suitable to implement small and medium-scale surface irrigation projects with some limitations. Therefore, under proper land and water management, it can benefit the local community to meet the food demand. In order to sustainably develop the area for surface irrigation, land leveling operation or soil conservation work has to be incorporated to break surface slope and to make it suitable for surface irrigation. Moreover, the irrigation potential from this study can be increased by using sprinkler and drip irrigation methods. Keywords: Land suitability, Surface irrigation, AHP weighted overlay, GIS, Qaho Watershed