Novel La-doped BiVO4microcakes have been hydrothermally synthesized and characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, and DRS techniques.The results reveal that the well crystallized and cake-like Bi0.95La0.05VO4monoclinic crystal with the diameter range of 15 μm and the width range of 0.2-0.8 μm can be obtained via a template-free hydrothermal route. Compared with pure BiVO4microcakes, Bi0.95La0.05VO4microcake shows a little red shift in the absorption band, resulting in a narrowed band gap (2.37 eV), which has the better photocatalytic activity with a 98.6 % degradation of methylene blue (MB) with a concentration of 10 mg/L under visible-light irradiation for 60 min.