Ultra fine grained (UFG) dual-phase (DP) steels containing different amounts of V microalloying element were produced by a new approach utilizing cold rolling followed by intercritical annealing of a ferrite-martensite duplex starting structure. The DP steels were cold rolled up to 80% thickness reduction followed by intercritical annealing at 770 °C for 15-480 s to form the UFG structures. The effects of V contents (0.00, 0.06, 0.12 and 0.18 wt%) and intercritical annealing time on the microstructural evolutions, mechanical properties, strain hardening behavior, and fracture mechanism were investigated. The results showed that increasing V content up to 0.12 wt.% decreased the average grain size of ferrite (~3 mm) and the average martensite island size (~2 mm), while approximately fixed the volume fraction of martensite. further grain refinement was not detected in the steel containing 0.18 wt.% V. Furthermore, the results showed that increasing intercritical holding time up to 8 min enhnaced the martensite island size and the volume fraction of martensite, while approximately unchanged the ferrite grain size up to 6 min. Tensile testing revealed intense effect of V precipitations on mechanical properties. The results showed a promising strength-elongation balance in terms of energy absorption for DP steels (UTS´UE @100 J-cm -3 ) compared to both the as-received ferritic-pearlitic (?). Analysis of strain hardening behavior of the UFG DP steels through Holloman analysis showed a continuous variation work hardening rate response which could be approximated by 2 linear regimes. In all DP steels, the prominent mode of fracture was ductile. It was also found that the average dimple size is decreased with increasing V content. Keywords : Ultrafine-grained dual phase steel, Cold-rolling and intercritical annealing, Microalloying element, Vanadium