Background: In order to steadily improve nursing students' academic and professional performance, they need to be motivated. Additionally, students must cultivate their adaptive ability to deal with difficulties encountered during the learning process and to adjust to work-related situations, so adversity quotient is necessary. Purpose: To assess the mediating role of adversity quotient in the relationship between nursing students' academic motivation and career adaptability.  Design: A descriptive, correlational research design was utilized. Sampling: All nursing student (n= 550) enrolled in 4th academic year in the second semester of academic year 2022- 2023, setting: Faculty of Nursing, Tanta University. Instruments: Three instruments were used: Academic Motivation Scale, Career Adaptability Scale and Adversity Quotient Scale. Results:  35.8% & 35.5% of nursing students had a moderate and high level of academic motivation, 40.2% of them had a moderate level of career adaptability.  Meanwhile, 40.7 % had a high level of adversity quotient. Conclusion: There was a significant positive correlation between nursing students' academic motivation & adversity quotient, between adversity quotient & career adaptability and between academic motivation & career adaptability. Adversity quotient mediates the relationship between academic motivation and career adaptability. Recommendation:  Nursing students should be encouraged to participate in volunteer works, and other experiential learning opportunities that can expose them to different aspects of the nursing profession and help them to develop a clearer understanding of their career goals and aspirations.