A facile synthesis route is reported for preparation of N-doped mesoporous TiO2 nanoparticles (NMT-x) through evaporation induced self-assembly by using pluronic F127, titanium isopropoxide, and various amounts of urea as templating agents, titanium and nitrogen sources, respectively. A variety of different spectroscopic and analytical techniques, such as powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), N-2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman, UV-vis and X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopies were used to characterize the physicochemical properties of various NMT-x catalysts. Among the samples, NMT-1.25 catalysts, which may be due to moderate N-doping (3.46 at.%) and surface area (67 m(2) g(-1)) of mesoporous TiO2, were found to possess surpassing photocatalytic activities of hydrogen production from water splitting under visible light if compared with the conventional TiO2 photocatalyst. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.