Abstract: The dehydrogenation performance of vanadyl catalysts was closely related to the form of surface vanadyl species. To enhance the vanadium dispersion, phosphorus was adopted to modify V-MCM-41 catalysts by using organic vanadium and phosphorus precursors. The influence of phosphorus introduction to the mesoporous structure and vanadyl species were investigated by various characterization techniques. The results showed that the catalysts could maintain ordered hexagonal mesoporous structures though the specific surface area slowly decreased along with the increase of phosphorus content. Both the reducibility and dispersion of the surface vanadyl species were improved. The proportion of polymerized vanadyl species obviously decreased due to the presence of phosphorus species. The propane dehydrogenation reaction results showed that both the catalytic performance and the catalyst stability were improved. Both the maximum surface vanadyl site density and optimum propane dehydrogenation performance were obtained over the sample with Si/P molar ratio of 30.