Barley is one of the most cereal crops in Ethiopia for production and consumption. Using unimproved and agro ecologically non-recommendable variety was one of the problems in the study area. The experiments were conducted at Wachemo University main station and Anlemo district in 2020 main cropping season to select and recommend the best performing and high yielding varieties. Five local and five improved varieties were evaluated in randomized complete block design with three replications. The analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences in each location, across location and location treatment interaction for most of the traits. Tikurgabs (4142.90 kg/ha), Hagala (3571.40 kg/ha) and HB-1307 (3809.50 kg/ha) were showed good performance in grain yield and other important agronomic traits in both locations followed by Shage (3023.80 kg/ha); suggested for further demonstration and popularization in the study area.