Neurons of the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) regulates emotional and motivational behavior via highly collateralized axon arbour innervating several forebrain areas. Maintaining an optimal excitation-inhibition balance is vital for PVT function, yet the sources of glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs are presently unclear. We identified subcortical glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs to the PVT by retrograde viral tracing in vGLUT2-Cre and vGAT-Cre mice, respectively. We found distinct retrogradely labelled cell groups containing purely vGLUT2+positive, purely vGAT+ or mixed neurons throughout the entire neuraxis. Quantitative analysis demonstrated that the largest vGLUT2+ projections were found in lateral parabrachial nucleus and the caudal hypothalamus (parasubthalamic nucleus, supramammillary nucleus) but the neurons of the anterior hypothalamus (median preoptic nucleus) and the brainstem (medial paralemniscal nucleus, pedunculopontine tegmentum) also provided substantial vGLUT2+ inputs to PVT. Major contingents of inhibitory afferents, without a vGLUT2+ component, arose from the diencephalon (thalamic reticular nucleus, zona incerta) the bed nucleus of stria terminalis, the mid-hypothalamic regions (lateral and dorsomedial hypothalamus) and the brainstem (dorsal raphe, and retrorubral field). The largest projection with dual, vGLUT2 and vGAT components originated in the periaqueductal grey area. Our data allows to delineate subcortical brain regions that exert purely excitatory, purely inhibitory or mixed influence on PVT activity. Convergence of these inputs within the PVT is studied in an accompanying poster (Buday et al.,). PVT activity have profound impact on forebrain activity and affective behavior. The present dataset allows to make testable hypotheses about the role of different afferent inputs in regulating PVT activity.