In this work, we report the synthesis and characterization of vanadium (V)–yttrium (Y) codoped TiO 2 photocatalyst for photocatalytic degradation of aqueous pollutants. Nano-sized crystalline (V, Y) codoped TiO 2 samples with different V concentrations were synthesized by hydrothermal method without post calcination. A redshift of optical absorption is found in all codoped samples describing the modification of the band structure. A nonlinear increase in the optical absorption edge of V, Y codoped TiO 2 was observed with increasing V doping concentration. Spectroscopic investigations show that the doping occurs in the form of substitution for lattice sites. V, Y codoped TiO 2 exhibits great enhancement in the photocatalytic response compared to pure TiO 2 and it is attributed to the visible light absorption and effective utilization of the photogenerated carriers. The sample with 0.2% V, Y codoped TiO 2 demonstrated the best photocatalytic behavior compared to the other synthesized samples.