Phylogenetic relationships among major lineages of the Evacanthinae, a highly diverse leafhopper subfamily distributed worldwide, were explored by analysing a dataset of 100 discrete morphological characters and DNA sequence data from five gene regions. Sixty-seven taxa representing all evacanthine tribes and all regional faunas, and fourteen putative outgroup taxa were included. Maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analyses yielded similar tree topologies that were well resolved with strong support for the monophyly of Evacanthinae and its four previously included tribes, but indicated that Draconirvana Dietrich, was incorrectly placed to tribe and that Sophonia Walker, Evacanthus Le Peletier &Serville, Bundera Distant, Paraonukia Ishihara and Onukia Matsumura are not monophyletic. Divergence time analysis suggests that the deepest divergences coincided with breakup of Gondwana but that more recent divergences occurred largely within a single biogeographic realm during the Paleogene, with a few long-distance dispersal events. Biogeographical analyses suggest that Evacanthinae originated in Neotropical region. A new tribe, Pentoffiini trib.n., is established to include Pentoffia Kramer and Evanirvana Hill, the genus Draconirvana Dietrich, placement n. is transferred to Evacanthini from Nirvanini, a key to tribes is also given and illustrations of representative genera are provided.