Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a versatile crop globally, though it has relatively short history of production and research in Ethiopia. Hence, genetic improvement is of paramount importance to increase the production and productivity of the crop, which requires understanding of genetic variability in the crop. The study was conducted during 2017/2018 main cropping season at Fogera, Ethiopia, to determine the magnitude of genetic variability for yield and yield related traits in 30 lowland rice genotypes. The experiment was laid out using randomized block design with three replications. Data were collected for 17 agronomic characters and analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the genotypes for all characters. Grain yield ranged from 2766.7 to 7062 kgha-1 with a mean of 4736.13kgha-1.Genotypes G26 (7062kg), G14 (6900kg), G8 (6583.1kg), G27 (6486.9kg), G29 (6400.6kg) and G30 (6343.1kg) were found to be high yielding. The genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) and phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) ranged from 8.44 and 8.53 for days to maturity to38.30 and 39.37 for number of unfilled grains panicle-1. Broad sense heritability value ranged from 77.45% for number of panicles per plant to 99.16 % for plant height. Characters viz. days to heading, days to flowering, tillers plant-1, panicle plant-1, culm length, panicle length, plant height, flag leaf length, flag leaf width, filled grains panicle-1, unfilled grains panicle -1, panicle weight, biomass, grain yield and harvest index had high heritability and high genetic advance as percent of mean, showing presence of additive genes and selection based on these traits would be successful. For future, six rice genotypes with grain yield above 6 tons ha-1 have been identified and are recommended to advance further towards release as new varieties. Moreover, the future rice research should be supplemented by molecular characterization to further confirm the obtained current results.