Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the oldest and the most extensively grown fruit plants worldwide with regards to its great economic significance throughout the world. Northern part of Iraq (Kurdistan) is regarded as one of the regions in Iraq where grapevine plants have been taken into cultivation. Despite the economic importance of grapevine cultivars in this region, they have not been precisely classified and their genetic data is also limited. In the present study 12 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to evaluate the genetic diversity among 13 local grape cultivars, also determining their genetic relationships with four Eurpean ones (17 cultivars studied). Results showed that the observed number of alleles (N) per locus varied from 3 to 9 with an average of 5.25 and the values of polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.28 to 0.776. Despite the average value (0.1716) of observed heterozygosity (Ho) was less than the average level (0.6427) of expected heterozygosity (He), results were relatively demon strated a random union of gametes in the population. In addition, genetic similarity among respective cultivars ranged from 0.17 to 0.1, indicating valuable genetic variation among studied cultivars. The analysis of UPGMA clustering demonstrated high genetic variation among those cultivars and grouped them into three main clusters. Findings from the present study might render striking information in determining local cultivars and in breeding management strategies that are of importance for genetic conservation and cultivar improvement.