A detailed mechanistic investigation of the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO with NH 3 was carried out on NiO(100) and NiO(110) surfaces using density functional theory (DFT) simulations. On stoichiometric NiO surfaces, the high barrier for O 2 dissociation resulted in a NO-assisted O 2 dissociation to form NO 2 , NH 3 dehydrogenation by active oxygen, NO 2 −NH 2 coupling, and N 2 O formation, ultimately leading to the product N 2 via N−O bond cleavage of N 2 O. On NiO(100), the N−O bond cleavage in N 2 O, and on NiO(110), the N−N coupling had high barriers of 1.95 eV. On NiO(100), N 2 O was a likely side product aside from N 2 . On partially reduced NiO surfaces, facile direct O 2 activation at the oxygen vacancy led to a mechanistic shift to a NO-mediated pathway. This enabled selective N 2 formation on partially reduced NiO(100) and NiO(110) surfaces, with the highest activation barrier of less than 0.89 eV. Substitutional doping of NiO with Ru facilitated enhanced reducibility of the surface and strong interaction of O with the Ru site and reduced the N−O breaking barrier, enhancing the catalytic activity compared to undoped NiO. The partially reduced Ru-doped NiO surface exhibited activation barriers lower than those on the stoichiometric Ru-doped NiO surface and formed N 2 . These results indicate the possibility of enhancing catalytic activity and selectivity of NiO catalysts for lowtemperature SCR by modulating the reducibility of the surface and by substitutional doping, which enhances the Lewis acidity of the catalyst by modulating the local electronic structure around the metal sites.