Abstract: As a strategic emerging industry, digital industry is an important driving force to promote the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and construct a new advantage in regional competition. Exploring the evolution of the spatio-temporal pattern and driving factors of digital industry in the YREB is of great practical significance for optimizing the layout of digital industry. Based on the data of more than 300 000 digital enterprises from 2000 to 2020, this study used the descriptive statistics, standard deviational ellipse and multi-scale geographically weighted regression modelling methods to conduct a research. The results showed that: (1) The number of digital enterprises increased significantly during. The spatial distribution of the digital industry showed that “the core of the downstream cities was prominent, and the middle and upper reaches of the cities were gradually expanding”. （2）In terms of sub-industry, the digital product production industry showed a trend of “prominent downstream agglomeration core, and gradual expansion of the middle and upper reaches with the provincial capital city as the core”. The digital product service industry showed the characteristics of “close connection between the middle and lower reaches of the city, and continuous agglomeration in the lower reaches”. The digital factor support and technology emerging industry showed a trend of “the provincial capital city being the core, and a multi-core piecewise distribution”.（3）The spatial distribution of digital industries was generally affected by a variety of factors such as location, market, technology and institutions. The role of each driver was spatially heterogeneous. In addition, there existed differences in the impact of different types of digital industry drivers, i.e. digital production enterprises focused more on location factors and were path-dependent. The digital product service industries relied mainly on consumers and markets and were more path-creative. The digital support and technology emerging industries were found to be both path-dependent and path-creative in the location selection.