The Qinling Orogenic Belt (QOB) is a composite orogenic belt located between the North China Craton (NCC) and the South China Block (SCB), and formed as a result of multiple episodes of collision and accretion. Although the tectonic history of the QOB has been extensively studied and reviewed, the evolution of the belt remains controversial. This contribution mainly reviews the geological, geochemical, and geochronological data of all the Early Palaeozoic intrusive and volcanic rocks of different genetic types in different tectonic units of the QOB and investigates their tectonic implications, together with the records of sediments, fossils and metamorphic rocks, to synthesize a new model for the Early Palaeozoic tectonic framework of the QOB. The QOB contains four discrete tectonic units (from north to south): the southern margin of the NCC, the North Qinling Terrain (NQT), the South Qinling Terrain (SQT), and the northern margin of the SCB. The Kuanping Ocean (represented by the Kuanping suture between the NQT and NCC) was a long-lived ocean rather than a backarc basin. Southward subduction of the Kuanping oceanic slab probably had begun before the Neoproterozoic and continued until the closure of the oceanic basin during the Early Palaeozoic. The subsequent retreat of the subducting slab caused the exhumation of deeply subducted arc volcanic rocks, forming high-pressure – ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic rocks at 500 My and the Erlangping backarc basin later. The closure of this basin and the subsequent collision between the NQT and NCC occurred at ca. 440 Ma. The Shangdan Ocean was a proto-Tethyan Ocean that had existed as early as the Neoproterozoic, the oceanic slab eventually underwent northward subduction towards the NQT at ca. 520 Ma, and this ocean closed by ca. 420 Ma. Marginal rifting and tectonic extension within the northern margin of the SCB formed the Mianlue oceanic basin during the Early Devonian. The complex interactions between the four discrete tectonic units within the QOB also led to the multiple-phase Early Palaeozoic metamorphic events, with the closure of the Kuanping, Erlangping, and Shangdan oceanic basins resulting in the HP – UHP and granulite- and amphibolite-facies metamorphism occurred at ca. 500, ca. 440, and 420 Ma, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]