This study aims to evaluate the phenotypic diversity and the characteristics of 129 maize landraces, which were collected from Chongqing. By performing a two-year field trial, we evaluated the phenotypic variation and calculated the diversity index, i.e. Shannon-Weaver index. All these 129 landraces were subjected for cluster analysis with Ward method based on Euclidean distance of these resources. The phenotypic performance of all 31 traits were significantly positively correlated between two years, and the Shannon-Weaver diversity indices of 16 traits were more than 2.0. The diversity index of plant height exhibited the highest, 2.07 and 2.08 respectively in the year of 2017 and 2018. By clustering, the maize landraces collected from Chongqing were divided into 3 groups, i.e. Group I, early-maturing small-grain genotype, Group II, early-maturing flint genotype with middle stem, and Group III, medium-maturing genotype with high stem. Group I was mainly consisted of waxy resources that collected from middle altitude regions, Group II mainly contained early-maturing white flint resources from middle and high altitude mountains. And Group III mainly contained medium-maturing genotypes with high stem and larger ears that collected from middle to low altitude regions. In summary, maize landraces collected from Chongqing possess and exhibit three distinctive groups, the phenotypic characterization of which provided informative references for the germplasm protection and future mining and utilization of maize resources for maize breeding particularly in Chongqing.