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Evaluating the physical appropriateness of the terrain is an essential condition for increasing harvest productivity and allows farming populations to situate the appropriate crop in the appropriate site. Across Ethiopia, maize ranks among the fundamental staple foods and is produced throughout three agro-ecological belts: the highlands, midlands, and lowlands. Despite these realities, maize output remains critically depressed due to a lack of know-how and informational gaps regarding terrain fitness. Ascertaining the physical suitability of land for maize cultivation is indispensable to mitigating food insecurity. The current inquiry aims to assess the prospective terrain’s suitability for maize cultivation within the Didessa watershed of Western Ethiopia by deploying Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) alongside geospatial tools. Shifts in land use and land cover (LULC), climatic variables, relief, edaphic characteristics, and infrastructural provisions were factored into the terrain fitness appraisal for maize. The pairwise comparison matrix grounded in MCE was applied to approximate terrain fitness for maize crop farming. The findings signified that roughly 977.7 km2 (14.1%) is rated as highly suitable, 4794.9 km2 (69.1%) as moderately suitable, whereas 1118.8 km2 (16.1%) and 51.5 km2 (0.7%) of the examined region were grouped as marginally and not suitable for maize growing, respectively. This inquiry provides vital intelligence for decision-making bodies and the cultivator community to identify prospective zones for maize farming.