Flood similarity identification has important practical significance for floodwater utilization, flood control of reservoirs, and river ecological restoration. In this study, the observations of 125 flood events at the 16 hydrological stations in the middle and upper reaches of the Huai River Basin from 2006 to 2015 were collected, and the metrics of flood magnitude, timing, and rate of changes and patterns were adopted to characterize the entire flood events. Multivariate statistical analysis—principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering method—were adopted to identify the representative flood event types. Finally the temporal and spatial distributions of each flood event type were identified. The results show that: 1) there are five types of representative flood events in the upper and middle reaches of the Huai River Basin, including long duration and extreme variability type, multiple peaks and long duration type, thin and short duration type, fat and short duration type, and conventional type. 2) From the perspective of temporal distribution, the number of flood event types showed a decreasing trend during 2006-2015, and the proportion of conventional floods gradually increased. More flood event types were found in the high flow years ( e.g. 2007) and normal flow years ( e.g. 2006), and fewer types were in the low flow years (2011-2013) with high frequency of conventional and fat and short duration flood event types. 3) From the perspective of spatial distribution, many flood event types appeared at the source regions, and the flood event types at the middle reaches and downstream regions were relatively few. The flood event type of thin and short duration gradually changed to fat and short duration due to the increased water source conservation capacity, reservoirs' storage capacity, and precipitation diversity in the basin. The study provides some reference for flood information mining and characteristics analysis at the basin scale, and provides scientific foundations for decision makers in flood event analysis, reservoir flood control, and floodwater utilization in the Huai River Basin.