Faced with environmental changes, plants may either move to track their ancestral niches or evolve to adapt to new niches. Vitaceae, the grape family, has evolved diverse adaptive traits facilitating a global expansion in wide-ranging habitats, making it ideal for investigating transition between move and evolve strategies and exploring the underlying mechanisms. Here we inferred the patterns of biogeographic diversification and trait evolution in Vitaceae based on a robust phylogeny with dense sampling including 495 species (~52% of Vitaceae species). Vitaceae probably originated from Asia—the diversity centre of extant genera and the major source of dispersals. Boundaries of the Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene were identified as turning points in shifting strategies. A significant decrease in move strategy was identified during the Oligocene, followed by increases in move and evolve. After the Miocene, evolve began to dominate, during which increased niche opportunities and key trait innovations played important roles.